Main Cast: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy
Release Year: 1970
Country: US
Run Time: 137 minutes
Plot
Airport had enough plot and enough star power in its cast for three feature films, and it only encompassed about half of the complexity or characters found in Arthur Hailey's best-selling potboiler. Essentially built around 12 harrowing hours at a major Midwestern airport, the film had everything an audience of the period could have wanted -- suspense, romance, drama, and comedy -- all spread across a vast canvas. Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is the manager of Lincoln Airport, facing a night beset by the worst blizzard in a decade, a wife (Dana Wynter) who announces she wants a divorce, a primary runway blocked by an airliner stuck in a snowdrift, and a governing board ready to fire him. Bakersfeld's cynical, smooth-talking brother-in-law, Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), won't let up on his criticism of the management at Lincoln, but he has his own problems as well, mostly in the form of a young stewardess, Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), who is pregnant by him and whom he finds he genuinely loves. Add to that the presence of an old lady stowaway (Helen Hayes) and a mentally disturbed passenger (Van Heflin) carrying a bomb, and there's more than enough plot to keep viewers engrossed for two hours plus. Airport became one of the top-grossing movies of its era, racking up seven-digit box-office numbers and spawning an entire film genre -- the disaster movie. With Jean Seberg, George Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Barry Nelson, and Maureen Stapleton filling out the rest of the leading roles, there was something for almost everyone in this film. The movie still has a lot to offer if only as a prime example of Hollywood at its most successfully glitzy, but, if possible, viewers should try and see the letterboxed version of Airport on DVD (released May 2001). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Airport was widely lambasted by critics for its tried-and-true technique of showcasing a raft of Grand Hotel-style big-name box-office stars in a melodramatic thriller; Judith Crist called it "the best film of 1944." But no one could argue with its success or its influence. Director/screenwriter George Seaton displayed a masterful old hand's touch for showcasing stock characters in a soap opera format, adapting Arthur Hailey's blockbuster novel with Dean Martin as the pilot and a cast top-heavy with stars. Airport won huge audiences and six Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, with veteran Helen Hayes, one of the first Oscar winners in 1932, winning a supporting award. The crowd-pleasing behemoth spawned almost a decade's worth of big-budget disaster films, including three inferior sequels, and then another round of disaster spoofs, beginning with 1980's Airplane! ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
Preston Ames - Art Director, Alexander Golitzen - Art Director, Edith Head - Costume Designer, Donald Roberts - First Assistant Director, George Seaton - Director, Stuart Gilmore - Editor, Alfred Newman - Composer (Music Score), Ernest Laszlo - Cinematographer, Ross Hunter - Producer, David Moriarty - Sound/Sound Designer, George Seaton - Screenwriter, Orin Borsten - Publicist, Arthur Hailey - Book Author
Airport is a 1970 film based on the 1968 Arthur Haileynovel of the same name. This film, which earned over $100,000,000[1] at the box office at a time when achieving that milestone was rare, focuses on an airport manager trying to keep his airport open during a snowstorm, while a suicidal bomber plots to blow up a Boeing 707 in flight. The film cost $10 million to produce.
Airport paved the way for the 1970s disaster film genre, establishing the widely-followed convention of "microcosmic melodrama combined with catastrophe-oriented adventure".[2]
This film was based on the best-selling novel by Arthur Hailey. With considerable attention to the details of day-to-day airport and airline operations, the plot of the movie concerns the response to both a paralyzing snowstorm and to an attempt to blow up an airliner.
Demolition expert D.O. Guerrero, down on his luck and with a history of mental illness, purchases a life insurance policy with the intent to commit suicide by blowing up a Rome-bound Boeing 707 Intercontinental jet from a snowbound Chicago airport. He plans to do this while he is on board using a self-made bomb hidden inside an attache case, while in flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Guerrero does this in the hope that his wife, Inez, will benefit from the insurance money.
Co-pilot Vern Demerest tries to persuade Guerrero not to trigger the bomb while airport manager Mel Bakersfeld deals with a variety of personal, weather, runway and stowaway problems from the ground. The ultimate detonation causes explosive decompression and Guerrero is sucked out of the plane. Chief stewardess Gwen, pregnant with Demerest's child, is seriously injured in the blast. The plane returns to Chicago to attempt an emergency landing -– all while the airport is in the midst of a blizzard with one runway closed from a stuck-in-the-snow airliner that chief mechanic Joe Patroni is trying to move in time.
The film is characterized by ensemble acting in which many personal stories intertwine while decisions are made minute-by-minute by the airport staff.
Production
The majority of the filming was done at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport. A display in the modern-day terminal, along with stills from the field and from the film itself illustrated the story as such: "Minnesota's legendary winters attracted Hollywood here in 1969, when portions of the film Airport were shot in the terminal and on the field. The weather remained stubbornly clear, however, forcing the director to use plastic 'snow' to create the appropriate effect."
Airport was released into theatres on March 5, 1970. Overall, it made $100,489,151 and was the highest-grossing film of the year.[4]
Reviews
Critics have mostly panned Airport in the years since its release,[5][6] with the most generous reviews complimenting the film's influence on the disaster genre and its "camp value."[7][8]
This movie is the final film project of composer Alfred Newman. Newman's health was failing at the time and so he was unable to conduct the sessions for the commercially-released recording of his music (this duty was handled by Stanley Wilson); Newman did conduct the sessions for the music heard in the film.
Sequels
The success of Airport spawned three sequels, the first two of which were box office hits.
The one actor appearing in all four "Airport" films was George Kennedy in recurring role of Joe Patroni. Patroni's character evolves over the series, however, and he goes from a chief mechanic in Airport to a Vice President of Operations in Airport 1975, a consultant in Airport '77, and an experienced pilot in The Concorde...Airport '79.
