With a blend of dark humour, witty dialogue and psychological insights, this unusual "ahead of it's time" film tried to find an insight into the Lost Generation. With debts to Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, it was given it's own style by German director William Dieterle (in his American movie debut) and also with script by John Monk Sanders, taken from his own novel "Single Lady". Sanders was best known at that time for such male dominated movies as "Wings" and "The Dawn Patrol".
The movie starts with some aerial combat scenes showing the camaraderie of four friends - survivors who choose to life a life of European expatriation rather than return to their families and conventional middle class values. They form an alliance with kooky flapper Nikki (Helen Chandler) and she becomes their mascot. Together they live a life of happy desperation, constantly drunk and always enchanted with Nikki's answer to most questions "I'll take vanilla"!!! Nikki is a sophisticated innocent and like the boys, part of the lost generation.
The doctor compares them to "spent bullets, shattered watches" and says they are "cooled off and useless". He is talking to Frink (Walter Byron) an outsider, the "normal" one who has no sympathy with what he sees as the other's inability to snap out of their woes. There is drug addicted Francis (Elliot Nugent) with his alarm clock watch, reckless Bill (Johnny Mack Brown), alcoholic Shep (David Manners) who finds it easier to remain drunk so he won't have to deal with a tic in his eye and Cary (Richard Barthelmess), the leader.
The chums go to Nikki's apartment and are just enchanted at her clothes, her perfume, her shoes ("I can walk faster in red shoes") her baby turtles in the bath!!! She has deeper feelings for Cary and questions why he and his friends do not want to return to normal life. They go to the cemetery where Cary tells her the story of Abelard and Heloise - not all the story, it was too strong even for pre-code audiences. Nikki again puts her foot in it by exclaiming "at least I now have names for my two turtles"!! Cary is not impressed and begins to find Nikki a bit too flippant so decides to go to Portugal. On the train, Frink forces himself on Nikki and there is an even bigger division - no-one really likes Frink.When devil may care John dies after leaping into a bull ring events turn sombre - Frink is killed at a carnival by Francis, who then disappears into the night ("that's the first time I've ever seen him really happy"), Shep then dies from a passing bullet leaving Cary and Nikki to plan a more conventional future together.
The most extraordinary part of "The Last Flight" was the luminous Helen Chandler. I am not particularly familiar with her but with her no sequitor thoughts "I'm drinking teeth"!!!, her stories that began "When I was a little girl..." and her just seeming to inhabit the role, I think I have fallen in love with her!!! This doesn't take anything away from Richard Barthelmess's incisive performance, his soulful eyes have never seemed so effective. It is easy to see why this movie failed to impress audiences battling the depression, with it's downbeat story, the absence of traditional narrative structure and the flippant message of "Get tight and stay tight"!! A month after the movie's release a short lived musical adaptation entitled "Nikki" opened on Broadway with Douglas Montgomery, Fay Wray and Archie Leach (Cary Grant) in the Manners, Chandler and Barthelmess roles.
Highly, Highly Recommended.
The movie starts with some aerial combat scenes showing the camaraderie of four friends - survivors who choose to life a life of European expatriation rather than return to their families and conventional middle class values. They form an alliance with kooky flapper Nikki (Helen Chandler) and she becomes their mascot. Together they live a life of happy desperation, constantly drunk and always enchanted with Nikki's answer to most questions "I'll take vanilla"!!! Nikki is a sophisticated innocent and like the boys, part of the lost generation.
The doctor compares them to "spent bullets, shattered watches" and says they are "cooled off and useless". He is talking to Frink (Walter Byron) an outsider, the "normal" one who has no sympathy with what he sees as the other's inability to snap out of their woes. There is drug addicted Francis (Elliot Nugent) with his alarm clock watch, reckless Bill (Johnny Mack Brown), alcoholic Shep (David Manners) who finds it easier to remain drunk so he won't have to deal with a tic in his eye and Cary (Richard Barthelmess), the leader.
The chums go to Nikki's apartment and are just enchanted at her clothes, her perfume, her shoes ("I can walk faster in red shoes") her baby turtles in the bath!!! She has deeper feelings for Cary and questions why he and his friends do not want to return to normal life. They go to the cemetery where Cary tells her the story of Abelard and Heloise - not all the story, it was too strong even for pre-code audiences. Nikki again puts her foot in it by exclaiming "at least I now have names for my two turtles"!! Cary is not impressed and begins to find Nikki a bit too flippant so decides to go to Portugal. On the train, Frink forces himself on Nikki and there is an even bigger division - no-one really likes Frink.When devil may care John dies after leaping into a bull ring events turn sombre - Frink is killed at a carnival by Francis, who then disappears into the night ("that's the first time I've ever seen him really happy"), Shep then dies from a passing bullet leaving Cary and Nikki to plan a more conventional future together.
The most extraordinary part of "The Last Flight" was the luminous Helen Chandler. I am not particularly familiar with her but with her no sequitor thoughts "I'm drinking teeth"!!!, her stories that began "When I was a little girl..." and her just seeming to inhabit the role, I think I have fallen in love with her!!! This doesn't take anything away from Richard Barthelmess's incisive performance, his soulful eyes have never seemed so effective. It is easy to see why this movie failed to impress audiences battling the depression, with it's downbeat story, the absence of traditional narrative structure and the flippant message of "Get tight and stay tight"!! A month after the movie's release a short lived musical adaptation entitled "Nikki" opened on Broadway with Douglas Montgomery, Fay Wray and Archie Leach (Cary Grant) in the Manners, Chandler and Barthelmess roles.
Highly, Highly Recommended.