Horace Corigliano's preceding comment is touching. He clearly has enough self discipline for ten normal guys. Not only did he fly two tours with the 306th but he gave up smoking and drinking! He can give the rest of us lessons. Anything critical I might say about the film has nothing to do with the real story behind the film, as he and the others experienced it.
Actually, I don't have that much to say that is critical. It's a fine movie. It had to be made no earlier than 1949 because it could not have been made during the war, dealing as it does with human weakness and disability in our own ranks. By 1949, a banner year for a second look, with victory safely behind us, we could afford to peer a bit more closely at what actually went on. But I should also point out that it includes just about every cliche in the book, as does the novel it was based on. It may be that at the time of the film's release, these situations and bits of dialogue had not yet become cliches. I'll just give a few examples: Peck, as General Savage, says, "I'm not here to win a popularity contest with Keith Davenport. I'd lose THAT one." I can't imagine how many times that line has resurfaced. Another one: Peck is giving a pep talk to the group. "There's nothing wrong with being afraid. Fear is normal. Only stop WORRYING about it. Consider yourself already dead!" That's a pep talk? I'll mention one example of this reasoning, the commander reassuring subordinates that "fear is normal", resurfacing -- in "Flying Leathernecks." Beirne Lay's novel was a neatly written genre piece and the film follows it closely. Many of the incidents are drawn from real life (eg., the experiences of the crew in the initial crash landing, with someone trying to land the B-17 with the mortally wounded pilot fighting him all the way and blood frozen all over the windscreen). At that, the novel had to be tamed a bit here and there. When Savage visits the officer's club for the first time he is not only insulted by Major Cobb at the bar, they actually get into a fist fight.
The production values are good. The props and art direction convincing. The score is evocative. And the acting generally superb. Gregory Peck has never been better at radiating principled sincerity. Dean Jagger certainly deserved his Academy Award. And the script itself is a grabber. Savage may not be much of a psychologist -- he accuses Davenport of "overidentification with his men" -- but he's a human being under that ruthlessness, and his crack-up is moving, even if we don't know why it takes place exactly when it does. It's still dramatic. Savage cannot bring himself to swing through the nose hatch of the B-17 although he tries repeatedly. The engines of all the airplanes are revving up and he holds on to a fuselage that is shivering with vibrations, whipped by wind, in an all-engulfing ocean of noise.
The only combat scene is drawn from real footage. It doesn't last long. It doesn't have to. It's horrifying and makes its point quickly and effectively.
The losses suffered by the 8th Air Force in England were appalling. I think it may have been Eaker who was in charge at that period, and he was intent on proving his point that precision daylight bombing would accomplish what de Seversky had been saying it would: the destruction of the enemy's capacity for waging war. Well, at least as implemented here at this stage of the war, it didn't. Bomber losses rose to insupportable levels and the program was suspended for a time. (The British, carrying out night-time area bombing, were no more successful.) The carefully documented Strategic Bombing Survey carried out after the war, under the guidance of John Kenneth Galbraith and others, should be required reading at all military academies. The German industrial machine managed to cope with the bombing by various means, until their fuel sources were simply pounded into oblivion and finally taken by Russian troops. At the end of the war there were hordes of new airplanes and other weapons ready for deployment, but no one left to man them, and no oil to drive them. Bombs, it was concluded, are great for tearing up cities. But they didn't weaken the morale of civilians in Germany, any more than they had earlier in England. The game was hardly worth the candle. And if it couldn't break the back of a highly industrialized country like Germany, how could we ever have convinced ourselves that it would work twenty-five years later in a country that had virtually no important industrial targets, like North Vietnam? There is something tragic about the image of an extremely expensive and effective ordnance platform like a B-52 dropping several tons of bombs and hoping to hit some peasants riding bicycles on a dirt trail through the jungle.
But the persistence of that mythos is no reflection on the experiences and valor of the men who flew in the 8th Air Force, or on this film, which turned out to be the fons et origo of so many genre cliches. It's gripping.
Actually, I don't have that much to say that is critical. It's a fine movie. It had to be made no earlier than 1949 because it could not have been made during the war, dealing as it does with human weakness and disability in our own ranks. By 1949, a banner year for a second look, with victory safely behind us, we could afford to peer a bit more closely at what actually went on. But I should also point out that it includes just about every cliche in the book, as does the novel it was based on. It may be that at the time of the film's release, these situations and bits of dialogue had not yet become cliches. I'll just give a few examples: Peck, as General Savage, says, "I'm not here to win a popularity contest with Keith Davenport. I'd lose THAT one." I can't imagine how many times that line has resurfaced. Another one: Peck is giving a pep talk to the group. "There's nothing wrong with being afraid. Fear is normal. Only stop WORRYING about it. Consider yourself already dead!" That's a pep talk? I'll mention one example of this reasoning, the commander reassuring subordinates that "fear is normal", resurfacing -- in "Flying Leathernecks." Beirne Lay's novel was a neatly written genre piece and the film follows it closely. Many of the incidents are drawn from real life (eg., the experiences of the crew in the initial crash landing, with someone trying to land the B-17 with the mortally wounded pilot fighting him all the way and blood frozen all over the windscreen). At that, the novel had to be tamed a bit here and there. When Savage visits the officer's club for the first time he is not only insulted by Major Cobb at the bar, they actually get into a fist fight.
The production values are good. The props and art direction convincing. The score is evocative. And the acting generally superb. Gregory Peck has never been better at radiating principled sincerity. Dean Jagger certainly deserved his Academy Award. And the script itself is a grabber. Savage may not be much of a psychologist -- he accuses Davenport of "overidentification with his men" -- but he's a human being under that ruthlessness, and his crack-up is moving, even if we don't know why it takes place exactly when it does. It's still dramatic. Savage cannot bring himself to swing through the nose hatch of the B-17 although he tries repeatedly. The engines of all the airplanes are revving up and he holds on to a fuselage that is shivering with vibrations, whipped by wind, in an all-engulfing ocean of noise.
The only combat scene is drawn from real footage. It doesn't last long. It doesn't have to. It's horrifying and makes its point quickly and effectively.
The losses suffered by the 8th Air Force in England were appalling. I think it may have been Eaker who was in charge at that period, and he was intent on proving his point that precision daylight bombing would accomplish what de Seversky had been saying it would: the destruction of the enemy's capacity for waging war. Well, at least as implemented here at this stage of the war, it didn't. Bomber losses rose to insupportable levels and the program was suspended for a time. (The British, carrying out night-time area bombing, were no more successful.) The carefully documented Strategic Bombing Survey carried out after the war, under the guidance of John Kenneth Galbraith and others, should be required reading at all military academies. The German industrial machine managed to cope with the bombing by various means, until their fuel sources were simply pounded into oblivion and finally taken by Russian troops. At the end of the war there were hordes of new airplanes and other weapons ready for deployment, but no one left to man them, and no oil to drive them. Bombs, it was concluded, are great for tearing up cities. But they didn't weaken the morale of civilians in Germany, any more than they had earlier in England. The game was hardly worth the candle. And if it couldn't break the back of a highly industrialized country like Germany, how could we ever have convinced ourselves that it would work twenty-five years later in a country that had virtually no important industrial targets, like North Vietnam? There is something tragic about the image of an extremely expensive and effective ordnance platform like a B-52 dropping several tons of bombs and hoping to hit some peasants riding bicycles on a dirt trail through the jungle.
But the persistence of that mythos is no reflection on the experiences and valor of the men who flew in the 8th Air Force, or on this film, which turned out to be the fons et origo of so many genre cliches. It's gripping.