This movie is the story of Hans-Joachim Marseille, the German fighter pilot who, during the Battle of Britain and the North Africa campaign, was credited with shooting down 150 enemy aircraft, including 17 in one day... and a month after that, he died jumping from his failing plane.
Commenting on this movie offers me several issues. The main one is that this is, I believe, the first German movie (it's actually a German-Spanish co-production) from the 1950s that I've seen. It's directed by Alfred Weidenmann, a director with whom I am unfamiliar. He seems to have become a director in the early 1940s, in charge of a series of shorts about the Hitler Youth. By 1942 he was directing features ... invariably described as propaganda. After the war, he did not direct another film until 1953; denazification seems to have taken some time for him. He directed his last of 28 films in 1978, then directed television until 1999. He died the following year in Zurich.
My other issue with discussing this war film is that I have seen many of them, well over a thousand. If the saying that if you've seen one, you've seen them all has any truth in it, then if you've seen them all then you've seen one. It falls into the standard mold of the rebellious young man who does brilliantly and then dies pointlessly. In many ways, it's THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON in the air. A voiceover artist near the beginning and at the end makes rote observations of the pointlessness of the war. In the movie itself, there's none of that. There's the best friend of leading man Joachim Hansen from childhood, the good man who does the right thing at all times. There's Marianne Koch as the love interest who tries to talk him into deserting so they can have a life -- he doesn't know what she is talking about. There's even the commanding officer who talks about their unit, comparing himself to a father with many children; he strikes me as a Trevor Howard type for some reason.
It's the easy comparison with other war movies that troubles me. At one point, hauled back to Berlin to have medals pinned on him, he gives a speech at his old school. I thought about ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and how Lew Ayres, in a similar situation, breaks down, calls the teacher who inspired him to join the army a fraud, and says that nothing makes sense and he longs to go back to the Front, where he understands things. Hansen does no such thing. He gives a speech, grinning like a schoolboy, saying nothing about himself. He comes into this film loving to fly and shoot targets. He spends the majority of the film flying and shooting down targets. He dies, and there's no sense of character, no sense of growth, and no regrets, although others around him have them.
Perhaps that's the point of this film, but I find it like listening to a songwriter who introduces each song with "And then I wrote...". If this was intended as an anti-war film, it's about as effective as a Dime Novel. Considering the great anti-war films of the era.... well, if you've seen one, you've seen them all, and this isn't one.
Commenting on this movie offers me several issues. The main one is that this is, I believe, the first German movie (it's actually a German-Spanish co-production) from the 1950s that I've seen. It's directed by Alfred Weidenmann, a director with whom I am unfamiliar. He seems to have become a director in the early 1940s, in charge of a series of shorts about the Hitler Youth. By 1942 he was directing features ... invariably described as propaganda. After the war, he did not direct another film until 1953; denazification seems to have taken some time for him. He directed his last of 28 films in 1978, then directed television until 1999. He died the following year in Zurich.
My other issue with discussing this war film is that I have seen many of them, well over a thousand. If the saying that if you've seen one, you've seen them all has any truth in it, then if you've seen them all then you've seen one. It falls into the standard mold of the rebellious young man who does brilliantly and then dies pointlessly. In many ways, it's THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON in the air. A voiceover artist near the beginning and at the end makes rote observations of the pointlessness of the war. In the movie itself, there's none of that. There's the best friend of leading man Joachim Hansen from childhood, the good man who does the right thing at all times. There's Marianne Koch as the love interest who tries to talk him into deserting so they can have a life -- he doesn't know what she is talking about. There's even the commanding officer who talks about their unit, comparing himself to a father with many children; he strikes me as a Trevor Howard type for some reason.
It's the easy comparison with other war movies that troubles me. At one point, hauled back to Berlin to have medals pinned on him, he gives a speech at his old school. I thought about ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, and how Lew Ayres, in a similar situation, breaks down, calls the teacher who inspired him to join the army a fraud, and says that nothing makes sense and he longs to go back to the Front, where he understands things. Hansen does no such thing. He gives a speech, grinning like a schoolboy, saying nothing about himself. He comes into this film loving to fly and shoot targets. He spends the majority of the film flying and shooting down targets. He dies, and there's no sense of character, no sense of growth, and no regrets, although others around him have them.
Perhaps that's the point of this film, but I find it like listening to a songwriter who introduces each song with "And then I wrote...". If this was intended as an anti-war film, it's about as effective as a Dime Novel. Considering the great anti-war films of the era.... well, if you've seen one, you've seen them all, and this isn't one.
