Themes: Military Life, Heroic Mission, War in the Sky
Main Cast: John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, Harry Carey, Charles Drake
Release Year: 1943
Country: US
Run Time: 124 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
On December 6, 1941, a squadron of nine B-17 bombers takes off for Hickam Field, HI. The crew of the Mary Ann, including two new men, assistant radio man Private Chester (Ray Montgomery) and gunner Sergeant Joe Winocki (John Garfield), assembles for the flight, and in the first 20 minutes, the movie reveals certain things about the crew: the shadowy past of one, the mother of another, and the wife of a third; two of them are good friends with the sister of McMartin (Arthur Kennedy), the bombardier, who lives in Honolulu; the son of the senior member of the crew, Sgt. White (Harry Carey Sr.), is a pilot stationed at Clark Field in the Philippines. Then more characters make entrances: the aircraft commander Quincannon (John Ridgely); Weinberg (George Tobias), a Jewish mechanic from New York; and a man from a farm in the upper Midwest -- they all represent a broad cross-section of America as it saw itself, and the "regular guys" in the Army Air Force as it existed in 1941. The flight proceeds without incident. Winocki, an embittered, washed-out flight school candidate who accidentally killed another pilot, is about to leave the service when the weather report from Hickam Field is interrupted, and the radio man begins picking up transmissions in Japanese. The Mary Ann and the rest of the squadron fly right into the middle of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor unarmed and out of gas, and nearly crack up landing on an emergency field; no sooner do they make repairs than the crew comes under attack, and the plane takes off and makes for Hickam Field, which they find a flaming shambles. They fly on to the Philippines, stopping at Wake Island just long enough to meet a few members of the doomed Marine garrison, taking their company mascot, a dog, with them. At Clark Field, the Mary Ann and her crew finally go into action against the enemy, flying in alone against a Japanese invasion force; Quincannon is mortally wounded in the brief action, which leaves the plane damaged seemingly beyond repair. The remaining crew won't give up the plane, however, even when ordered to abandon and destroy her; they get the bomber off just ahead of the advancing Japanese, and survive to help bring retribution to the invading fleet and the Japanese empire. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Howard Hawks primarily made two kinds of movies: breezy, fast-moving, breathlessly paced features of conventional length, and long, serious, very involved, epic-length works that also entailed adventure and excitement, but took their time telling their stories. Air Force is one of the latter, made at the height of World War II, and covering as many bases as possible in its patriotic content, and perhaps a few too many for its own good. Screenwriter Dudley Nichols accomplishes a difficult feat with his script, building tremendous suspense during the first 25 minutes of the picture as the plot leads right into an event -- the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- the outcome of which everyone in the audience (then and now) already knew; he did this by focusing on the personalities of the men involved, and providing just enough detail to their characters so that, coupled with some fine performances, the roles were more than simple stock stereotypes. There are some marvelous sequences scattered throughout this movie, including the preparation for the initial flight, where Hawks introduces the key dramatic characters smoothly and quickly; the banter between the men on that flight, and the increasingly ominous and suspenseful mood as they approach Pearl Harbor; the death of a pilot, with his crew acting out their roles in a take-off that is going on in his imagination as life ebbs from his body; the "bucket brigade" loading gasoline onto the stricken bomber as its crew works frantically to make it air-worthy ahead of the advancing Japanese; and the take-off from Clark Field, which is the emotional payoff of the picture, with the crew finally able to cut loose with their weapons on the enemy swarming around them. Air Force manages to weave its spell through these stunning sequences, even as it defies logic -- if one stopped and thought about it, too much happens to this single air crew within the space of a couple of weeks to be believable, but between them, Hawks, Nichols, and the cast never give you the chance to break that willing suspension of disbelief. There's also a lot more on the tray here than excellent scenes -- Hawks and Nichols did a very good job of providing a multiple climax on Air Force. Had it ended with the take-off from Clark Field, that would have been exciting enough, but they give another 15 minutes of combat, heroics, and action, with ever-larger explosions in an ever-larger canvas of events. In doing so, you finally get to see the B-17 do what it was designed to do -- bomb the hell out of an enemy -- and they even address one of the design flaws in the original plane (no effective tail-gun). In a sense, Air Force is the airborne equivalent of that other great Warner Bros. wartime action release of 1943, Action in the North Atlantic, and almost as rousing and entertaining as well as more stylish. It's a shame to have to cite a major flaw in a movie as enjoyable as this, but modern viewers should beware of the way that Air Force presents the circumstances of the attack on Pearl Harbor: The script claims that Japanese saboteurs at work in the Hawaiian population played an active role in the attack, and that there were Japanese snipers infiltrating ground facilities; there were no Japanese fifth columnists in Hawaii involved in the attack, and the script's slur on the Japanese-American population of Hawaii is something that the movie must live down, and audiences have to get past to enjoy the movie. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
John Hughes - Art Director, Jack Sullivan - First Assistant Director, Howard Hawks - Director, George J. Amy - Editor, Franz Waxman - Composer (Music Score), Leo F. Forbstein - Musical Direction/Supervision, Elmer Dyer - Cinematographer, James Wong Howe - Cinematographer, Elmer Syer - Cinematographer, Charles Marshall - Cinematographer, Hal B. Wallis - Producer, Walter F. Tilford - Set Designer, Roy Davidson - Special Effects, H.F. Koenekamp - Special Effects, Rex Wimpy - Special Effects, Nathan Levinson - Sound Special Effects, Dudley Nichols - Screenwriter
The film details the story the crew of the Mary-Ann, a B-17 bomber, in the first days after U.S. entry into World War II. It begins with a flight from California(Hamilton Field, just on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge) to Hickam Field at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 6, 1941. The unarmed B-17 squadron arrives right at the beginning of the Japanese attack. This is based on a true incident; radar operators thought the Japanese planes they detected were an incoming flight of B-17s.
The film includes an ensemble cast with John Garfield as a disaffected gunner who washed out of flight school after a mid-air collision in which another pilot was killed. Harry Carey plays the Mary-Ann's crew chief and a long-time veteran in the Army Air Corps, whose son is a pilot.
The routine ferry mission to Hawaii propels the Mary-Ann and its crew into the midst of war and their subsequent deployment to other Pacific bases include stops at Wake Island and the Philippines. Using wartime combat footage sparingly, the eventual missions in the Coral Sea mirror real-life events.
Cast
As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):[1]
Ten Boeing B-17B/C/D Flying Fortresses from Hendricks Field, Sebring, Florida. The majority of these aircraft were "modernized"(upgraded to B-17C standards) B-17Bs, as was the "star" of the film.
Six Martin B-26C Marauders from McDill Field, Tampa, Florida (painted as Japanese bombers).
The actual Mary-Ann was lost shortly after the production wrapped. This allegation is attributed to the production's technical advisor. There were no B-17B aircraft known to be used in combat; none left the Americas for other theaters of action. The two B-17B aircraft most likely to have played the part of "Mary Ann" were reclassified as instructional airframes in late 1943, and scrapped in early 1946.[2]
Inaccuracy
There is quite a bit of anti-Japanese propaganda. The crew is shot at by "local Japanese" on Maui and the Hickam Field commander tells the crew that vegetable trucks knocked the tails off a row of P-40 Warhawkfighters as the attack began. As detailed in Walter Lord's book, Day of Infamy, later investigations proved no Japanese-American was involved in any sabotage during the Pearl Harbor attack.
Reception
Critical acclaim followed the film's premiere as it echoed some of the emotional issues that underlied the American public psyche at the time including fears of Japanese Americans. Reviewers commented that this was a prime example of Howard Hawk's abilities; "Air Force is a model of fresh, energetic, studio-era filmmaking."[3] When seen in a modern perspective, the emotional aspects of the film seem out-of-proportion and although it has been wrongly dismissed as a piece of wartime propaganda, it still represents a classic war film that can be considered a historical document.[4]
When initially released, Air Force was one of the top three films in commercial revenue in 1943.
Awards
Air Force editor George Amy won an Oscar in the 1944 Academy Awards in the category of Best Film Editing. The film was also nominated for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White and Best Effects, Special Effects and Best Writing, Original Screenplay. Elmer Dyer , James Wong Howe and Charles Marshall were nominated for an Academy Award in the Cinematography - Black and White division.
^ Note: A B-17B can be distinguished from the later B-17C and B-17D by the "mission commander's bubble" over the flight deck area, on the B-17B, it is offset to the aircraft's right (to the left if facing the aircraft). The B-17C and B-17D mission commander's bubble are centered above the middle of the cockpit.
^ Anderson, Jeffrey M. "Wing Men."Combustible Celluloid, June 8, 2007.
^ Macdonald, Daniel."Air Force."DVD Verdict, August 31, 2007.
Bibliography
Dolan, Edward F. Jr. Hollywood Goes to War. London: Bison Books, 1985. ISBN 0-86124-229-7.
Hardwick, Jack and Ed Schnepf. "A Buff's Guide to Aviation Movies". Air Progress Aviation Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring 1983.
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