Air Force (1943)
There are many reasons this is an important film, but there are a couple reasons why this isn't an especially watchable one.
First, it's in the middle of the war, the big one, two years after Pearl Harbor and two years before Hiroshima. You can't expect anything but a slightly (or not so slightly) propaganda leaning movie. The fleet of flying fortresses (B-17 bombers) that make the basis for the movie are impressive machines, and the men are shown to be both competent and likable, good American boys and men. Director Howard Hawks had just finished "His Girl Friday" and "Ball of Fire," both comic masterpieces, and he was about to film "To Have and Have Not" with his buddy Humphrey Bogart. "Air Force" is not just a film between great films, it's made to the same high standards.
You'll see some astonishing photography here, by James Wong Howe (who made some other war films along with a dozen masterpieces among his 136 features over a lifetime). Part of the filming is on the ground, with great light and shadow and framing, and part are airborne battle scenes, including shooting enemy planes in midair, very dramatically. And the editing, which won an Oscar, is conspicuously excellent. Not only are the normal continuity edits from scene to scene and shot to shot sharp and perfect, there are also many times (during battle scenes) where the editing turns to fast cuts, or montage, that is really first rate. It would seem avant-garde in a less militaristic world.
What else to like? Well, the plot in its overview is fair enough, beginning with a chilling realization as the planes leave San Francisco that while flying to Hawaii the Japanese have attacked and they have nowhere to land. The emergency begins immediately. The actors, a few famous ones like John Garfield thrown in, are in good form, and the sense of group effort with the occasional disgruntled outsider is firmed up well.
But, in the end, the movie almost unwatchable if you care at all about realism. I don't mean accuracy, but believability. The men are endlessly cheerful in an offhand way even as they are about to die, or the world is crumbling around them. They gather to talk or chitchat and the camera has them fit the frame with almost a parody of posing. This isn't war, this is a movie, it seems to shout. Well, fine, it's a movie, and so you never quite buy into it. The events are sometimes implausible, as well, and of course, things work out well over all. Too well.
I have to say loudly that I understand why the movie was made this way. There was no room in 1943 in people's hearts or consciences for doubting and cynicism as people were being drafted, wounded, killed, and terrorized by actual battle, including battle from the air. But that doesn't mean it makes for relevant watching now. It's interesting, it's well made, it's important as part of how Americans saw the war through Hollywood's eyes, but it's also hard to get what it might have meant to home audiences back then.
There are many reasons this is an important film, but there are a couple reasons why this isn't an especially watchable one.
First, it's in the middle of the war, the big one, two years after Pearl Harbor and two years before Hiroshima. You can't expect anything but a slightly (or not so slightly) propaganda leaning movie. The fleet of flying fortresses (B-17 bombers) that make the basis for the movie are impressive machines, and the men are shown to be both competent and likable, good American boys and men. Director Howard Hawks had just finished "His Girl Friday" and "Ball of Fire," both comic masterpieces, and he was about to film "To Have and Have Not" with his buddy Humphrey Bogart. "Air Force" is not just a film between great films, it's made to the same high standards.
You'll see some astonishing photography here, by James Wong Howe (who made some other war films along with a dozen masterpieces among his 136 features over a lifetime). Part of the filming is on the ground, with great light and shadow and framing, and part are airborne battle scenes, including shooting enemy planes in midair, very dramatically. And the editing, which won an Oscar, is conspicuously excellent. Not only are the normal continuity edits from scene to scene and shot to shot sharp and perfect, there are also many times (during battle scenes) where the editing turns to fast cuts, or montage, that is really first rate. It would seem avant-garde in a less militaristic world.
What else to like? Well, the plot in its overview is fair enough, beginning with a chilling realization as the planes leave San Francisco that while flying to Hawaii the Japanese have attacked and they have nowhere to land. The emergency begins immediately. The actors, a few famous ones like John Garfield thrown in, are in good form, and the sense of group effort with the occasional disgruntled outsider is firmed up well.
But, in the end, the movie almost unwatchable if you care at all about realism. I don't mean accuracy, but believability. The men are endlessly cheerful in an offhand way even as they are about to die, or the world is crumbling around them. They gather to talk or chitchat and the camera has them fit the frame with almost a parody of posing. This isn't war, this is a movie, it seems to shout. Well, fine, it's a movie, and so you never quite buy into it. The events are sometimes implausible, as well, and of course, things work out well over all. Too well.
I have to say loudly that I understand why the movie was made this way. There was no room in 1943 in people's hearts or consciences for doubting and cynicism as people were being drafted, wounded, killed, and terrorized by actual battle, including battle from the air. But that doesn't mean it makes for relevant watching now. It's interesting, it's well made, it's important as part of how Americans saw the war through Hollywood's eyes, but it's also hard to get what it might have meant to home audiences back then.