Air Force **** (1943, John Garfield, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, Charles Drake, John Ridgley, George Tobias, James Brown, Harry Carey Sr) – Classic Movie Review 3172

Director Howard Hawks’s extremely well made and rousing 1943 patriotic wartime flag-waving drama about the American crew of an Air Force Boeing B17 bomber named the Mary Ann on a Far East mission in 1941 is one of his many classic movies, though it is not nearly as well known as some of the others.

There are six  main points of interest:

(1) Hawks, who served in the US Air Corps in World War One, provides the guaranteed excitement.

(2) John Garfield, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, Charles Drake, John Ridgley, George Tobias, James Brown and Harry Carey Sr, plus the sterling Warner Bros character actors, provide the excellent acting. Also in the cast are Stanley Ridges, Moroni Olsen, Edward , Brophy, Ward Wood, Ray Montgomery, Willard Robertson, Richard Lane, Faye Emerson, Bill Crago, Addison Richards, James Flavin, Ann Doran, Dorothy Peterson, James Millican, William Forrest, Murray Alper, Tom Neal, William Hopper, Walter Sande, Theodore von Eltz and Rand Brooks.

(3) Dudley Nichols provides the fine original screenplay, in which the bomber crew arrives in Pearl Harbor in the aftermath of the Japanese attack and is sent on to Manila to help with the defence of the Philippines.

(4) Elmer Dyer provides the marvellous aerial cinematography, with James Wong Howe and Charles A Marshall on the ground.

(5) The Army Air Corps provides the notable newsreel battle footage.

(6) And it was a technical triumph at the time. George Amy won an Oscar for Best Film Editing, and there were three other nominations, for Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and Best Special Effects – Hans F. Koenekamp and Rex Wimpy (photographic) and Nathan Levinson (sound).

You might have to be able to over-look the now embarrassing, unsubtle wartime propaganda, but that’s easy enough with the film in its time capsule. It wasn’t a time for the luxury of subtlety.

Hawks was also the director of Scarface (1932), Twentieth Century (1934), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), Ball of Fire (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), I Was a Male War Bride (1949), Monkey Business (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Rio Bravo (1959) and Rio Lobo (1970). Oh, and Land of the Pharaohs (1955). He died on December 26 1977, aged 81.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3172

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