This has just about everything a viewer might expect from a World War I movie about the RFC. Plenty of air combat, jollification in the evenings, fleeting amours in Amiens, some interpersonal conflict in the mess hall.
Maybe that's part of the problem. There's hardly anything here that hasn't been seen before.
It's by no means a terrible movie. The scenes of flying in those ancient crates are exhilarating. The performances are at least professional in caliber, although we get to see very little of the older establishment -- John Gielgud, Richard Johnson, Ray Milland, Trevor Howard. Instead the responsibility of carrying the movie rests chiefly on the shoulders of Malcolm McDowell as the squadron's commanding officer and Peter Firth as the new replacement, and they do well enough.
I gather the play on which this film is based was a highly successful story of the infantry but those responsible for transposing it to the screen have turned it into a mediocre assemblage of familiar incidents without much in the way of glue holding them together.
All the scenes are expectable if you've seen "Dawn Patrol" or "The Blue Max." The boyishly eager replacement has had fourteen hours of flight time. The more seasoned pilots put on a brave front, singing and dancing and boozing it up, but some are beginning to crack. McDowell needs a few belts before he can take her up. Simon Ward is unable to fly at all because he's down with "neuralgia" and is terrified of dying.
The German pilot who is shot down and captured is given a royal send off to the prison camp. (I first saw that scene in "Grand Illusion.") The virginal Firth has a one-nighter with a French prostitute and returns eager to take up the emotional part of the relationship, but she's with another officer and ignores him.
Nobody really talks about the fliers who haven't returned, but when Firth shows emotion, McDowell takes him aside and demands to know if he thinks he's the only one who cares.
McDowell was in the same school as Firth and was dormitory chief or something, but nothing comes of the friendship. It's rarely brought up so there isn't the tension associated with such role conflict, as there is in "The Desert Rats." McDowell has been dating Firth's sister but although it's mentioned as a potential complication, it's dropped from the story.
The movie LOOKS as if it hangs together but it's really a series of almost unrelated events that need some sort of central narrative conflict to carry us along.
There's something else too. The flight scenes aren't really that convincing. The aerial photography is fine but every anti-aircraft shell seems to burst in the pilots' faces. It's as if the gunners were marksmen. The pilot smiles. Ka-boom, and the screen explodes into orange, and then we see the pilot staring grimly through the smoke, but he and his machine are unscathed.
I'm not a techie when it comes to the history of guns but these guns fire at too high a cycling rate to be credible. And when an airplane goes into a tailspin it simply doesn't whine until it reaches a crescendo and smashes into the ground -- except in the stilted imaginations of some film makers. I don't know about guns but I know a little about spins. And I don't mean to carp, but such familiar conventions belong in cartoons.
I see I've been a little harsh on the film but, as I said, it's not bad. It's just not nearly as good as it might have been. The director and some of the post-production people seem to have been nodding off at the joystick. If you just want to see men in snappy uniforms walking around arguing, singing bawdy songs, or trying to out fly the Hun, you'll find this enjoyable.
Maybe that's part of the problem. There's hardly anything here that hasn't been seen before.
It's by no means a terrible movie. The scenes of flying in those ancient crates are exhilarating. The performances are at least professional in caliber, although we get to see very little of the older establishment -- John Gielgud, Richard Johnson, Ray Milland, Trevor Howard. Instead the responsibility of carrying the movie rests chiefly on the shoulders of Malcolm McDowell as the squadron's commanding officer and Peter Firth as the new replacement, and they do well enough.
I gather the play on which this film is based was a highly successful story of the infantry but those responsible for transposing it to the screen have turned it into a mediocre assemblage of familiar incidents without much in the way of glue holding them together.
All the scenes are expectable if you've seen "Dawn Patrol" or "The Blue Max." The boyishly eager replacement has had fourteen hours of flight time. The more seasoned pilots put on a brave front, singing and dancing and boozing it up, but some are beginning to crack. McDowell needs a few belts before he can take her up. Simon Ward is unable to fly at all because he's down with "neuralgia" and is terrified of dying.
The German pilot who is shot down and captured is given a royal send off to the prison camp. (I first saw that scene in "Grand Illusion.") The virginal Firth has a one-nighter with a French prostitute and returns eager to take up the emotional part of the relationship, but she's with another officer and ignores him.
Nobody really talks about the fliers who haven't returned, but when Firth shows emotion, McDowell takes him aside and demands to know if he thinks he's the only one who cares.
McDowell was in the same school as Firth and was dormitory chief or something, but nothing comes of the friendship. It's rarely brought up so there isn't the tension associated with such role conflict, as there is in "The Desert Rats." McDowell has been dating Firth's sister but although it's mentioned as a potential complication, it's dropped from the story.
The movie LOOKS as if it hangs together but it's really a series of almost unrelated events that need some sort of central narrative conflict to carry us along.
There's something else too. The flight scenes aren't really that convincing. The aerial photography is fine but every anti-aircraft shell seems to burst in the pilots' faces. It's as if the gunners were marksmen. The pilot smiles. Ka-boom, and the screen explodes into orange, and then we see the pilot staring grimly through the smoke, but he and his machine are unscathed.
I'm not a techie when it comes to the history of guns but these guns fire at too high a cycling rate to be credible. And when an airplane goes into a tailspin it simply doesn't whine until it reaches a crescendo and smashes into the ground -- except in the stilted imaginations of some film makers. I don't know about guns but I know a little about spins. And I don't mean to carp, but such familiar conventions belong in cartoons.
I see I've been a little harsh on the film but, as I said, it's not bad. It's just not nearly as good as it might have been. The director and some of the post-production people seem to have been nodding off at the joystick. If you just want to see men in snappy uniforms walking around arguing, singing bawdy songs, or trying to out fly the Hun, you'll find this enjoyable.