CONE OF SILENCE / TROUBLE IN THE SKY (1960)

The suspense is largely cerebral in this courtroom & cockpit drama about jet aviation and a suspect new line of aircraft.  Intelligent & involving, timely too considering current problems at Boeing, it earns full credit for tackling a story based on technical specifications: the safe handling of planes under difficult flying conditions with only a soupçon of personal issues to complicate things.  Bernard Lee (‘M’ in the early James Bond pics) is the vet pilot under scrutiny after an aborted take off: pilot error or design flaw?  Checked out as AOK and back in the sky, further troubles pop up just as Inspector Michael Craig takes a shine to daughter Elizabeth Seal causing rival pilot Peter Cushing (in a rare unsympathetic role) to suspect favoritism.  With a reasonable production (other than some unhappy model plane shots) & typically fine British supporting cast, the film ought to be smooth sailing . . . er, flying.  Yet so visually dull, it just sits on the screen and dies in front of you.  Deplorably understated & tasteful, it plays like a veritable call to shake up British cinema.  Something already happening over at Hammer in TechniColored Horror, in stage-to-screen adaptations of Angry Young Man plays, and soon in the British New Wave.  All three sweeping this style of filmmaking aside.  Ironic that a film about the dangers of following the rules too strictly should be hoist on its own petard in Charles Frend’s unbending, by-the-book dependability.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Frend could be better, especially in films with Jack Hawkins like THE CRUEL SEA/’53.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-cruel-sea-1953.html

OR: Sticking closer to our subject, David Lean’s THE SOUND BARRIER/’52..