Call Retiro 2046
Night Flight (1933)
directed by Clarence Brown
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I love stories about the early days of commercial aviation: daredevils put out to pasture after the first World War, strategists with eyes for an empire in the clouds. In 1933, John Barrymore wouldn't want the role of a pilot. He'd want to wear a suit, to keep his hands free for declamation. Stuff some working stiff into the cockpit to fiddle with the throttle. Ground is where the action is!
Thus, the hand-wringing board of directors of Trans-Andean European Air Mail anchors the episodic structure of Night Flight, instead of someone like the less "cerebral" Clark Gable, too busy jumping from a Douglas M-4 to his doom. In twenty-four hours, a serum used to treat infantile paralysis must make it from a clinic in Santiago to the hospital in Rio de Janeiro. To travel so far so quickly, pilots have to fly over the Andes and up the coast of Argentina in the dark.
Despite the South American setting, "European" is the tell, as it provides a nice excuse for internationally-minded Americanos like the Barrymore boys (John and Mister Potter) to fulminate at one another on a well-appointed soundstage. That eventually leads to this sound advice about pilots, regrettably not shared in a whisper while the brothers stay up late in bunk beds: "Admire them if you want to. Love them, even. But never let them know it."
Clarence Brown achieves a remarkable sense of scale in two shots, one of a parachute, filmed from above, disappearing into clouds, and the second, filmed at sea level in the midst of a storm, of a small navigational flare that loses its way. There's no death more romantic than an angry ocean, and so pilots go to glory while Riviére... gets a raise? Calls Errol Flynn?
By 1939, Geoff Carter was a pilot first, manager second. The first aviator we meet in this movie shows up on the runway minutes before takeoff, behind the wheel of an heiress's roadster. He leaps from the car in his tux and steps right into a flight suit. And what does the heiress say as she kisses him goodbye, when he chides her and tells her she won't be faithful? "I don't trust zippers, they work too fast." But zippers and assignments are out of his hands; he serves at the pleasures of people far away.
directed by Clarence Brown
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix
I love stories about the early days of commercial aviation: daredevils put out to pasture after the first World War, strategists with eyes for an empire in the clouds. In 1933, John Barrymore wouldn't want the role of a pilot. He'd want to wear a suit, to keep his hands free for declamation. Stuff some working stiff into the cockpit to fiddle with the throttle. Ground is where the action is!
Thus, the hand-wringing board of directors of Trans-Andean European Air Mail anchors the episodic structure of Night Flight, instead of someone like the less "cerebral" Clark Gable, too busy jumping from a Douglas M-4 to his doom. In twenty-four hours, a serum used to treat infantile paralysis must make it from a clinic in Santiago to the hospital in Rio de Janeiro. To travel so far so quickly, pilots have to fly over the Andes and up the coast of Argentina in the dark.
Despite the South American setting, "European" is the tell, as it provides a nice excuse for internationally-minded Americanos like the Barrymore boys (John and Mister Potter) to fulminate at one another on a well-appointed soundstage. That eventually leads to this sound advice about pilots, regrettably not shared in a whisper while the brothers stay up late in bunk beds: "Admire them if you want to. Love them, even. But never let them know it."
Clarence Brown achieves a remarkable sense of scale in two shots, one of a parachute, filmed from above, disappearing into clouds, and the second, filmed at sea level in the midst of a storm, of a small navigational flare that loses its way. There's no death more romantic than an angry ocean, and so pilots go to glory while Riviére... gets a raise? Calls Errol Flynn?
By 1939, Geoff Carter was a pilot first, manager second. The first aviator we meet in this movie shows up on the runway minutes before takeoff, behind the wheel of an heiress's roadster. He leaps from the car in his tux and steps right into a flight suit. And what does the heiress say as she kisses him goodbye, when he chides her and tells her she won't be faithful? "I don't trust zippers, they work too fast." But zippers and assignments are out of his hands; he serves at the pleasures of people far away.
Labels: Picture Credits
posted by NPK at 1:13 PM
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