User Reviews

As a Rattigan completist I have long coveted this film and now at last I own it on DVD. Whilst it would be ludicrous to compare it to The Way To The Stars, released the same year,for which Rattigan cannibalized his stage hit Flare Path, it's still a decent effort and worthy of being included in a time capsule of the period, The Way We Live Now and all that. Eddie Robinson gets co-star billing but has two reels screen time at most during which he manages effortlessly to outclass Dickie Attenborough who was still trying too hard to get noticed. Jack Watling takes what amounts to the second lead with David Tomlinson making up the numbers and a young George Cole in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him scene. Rattigan has cobbled a very workmanlike screenplay from this men only cast - albeit Attenborough contrives to slip a photograph of Sheila Sim under the wire. Now very much a period piece but a must for Rattigan buffs.

This propaganda film is obviously aimed at dropout pilots who are not keen to train as aircrew.The fact is that 55000 bomber crew were lost during the war as part of Butcher Harris failed attempt to bomb Germany into submission.There was only a one in three chance of completing a tour of duty.This in the raid at the end the plane is not comed in searchlights or attacked by more than one fighter.It this downplays the risks taken by aircrew.

As much a documentary as a fictional narrative, although there is no narrator. The film takes us -- in the person of a young and grinning Richard Attenborough -- through primary flight training in England, thence to advanced training in California, and finally back to England for a raid over Berlin.

Attenborough's friend, Watling, has the stuff to be a bomber pilot but poor Attenborough lacks a sense of altitude and can't land an airplane. He can navigate though, and even if it's somehow a lesser position in the status hierarchy he recovers his self esteem and learns to do his job.

The film lacks a sense of altitude as well. The story is by Terence Rattigan, who later wrote "Breaking the Sound Barrier," directed by David Lean, and, man, did THAT have a sense of altitude. The scenes of flight were thrilling. Here they're perfunctory. And the editing doesn't help. One minute a man is flying a trainer normally. Then, an instant cut, and he's trying to pull out of a frenized tailspin. The external scenes of airplanes flying are adequate for the period, but the shots in the cockpit or on the flight deck look as staged in a studio as they actually were.

There isn't any sort of conflict either, which might have enhanced the viewer's interest. Everybody wears stripes on his uniform and a stiff upper lip on his philtrum. For a contrast -- that is, a movie that involves some adversarial qualities between pilots and other crew members -- see "Bombardier." Or, if you want the Blue Plate Special, see Howard Hawks' "Air Force." I would have found it a better film if it had showed us some of the elements of navigation too. At one point, Attenborough is the navigator on an airplane flying through fog. The airplane is running out of fuel and the pilot keeps gently nudging Attenborough about the course and distance to the field. But Attenborough, all gnomed over his board at the navigator's position, is sweating over some problem he's having. It's a tense scene. The viewer wants to know what the problem is, but never finds out because the movie hasn't shown us even the most elementary features of navigation. And if we know nothing about the process, how can we understand its problems? It would be like a stockbroker telling you that we're having a little problem with your structured derivative instruments. What the hell does that mean? Anyway, the end result is that for five minutes we watch Attenborough struggling with -- well, with something.

Edward G. Robinson has a small part as an instructor at a California air field. I wish someone would explain exactly what that uniform is that he's wearing. If someone in that get up pulled me over and gave me a speeding ticket, I'd probably accept it as genuine.