Squeezed in between two prestige pics the same year*, this morale-boosting early WWII Army-Air Force recruitment pic, a programmer in all but its use of TechniColor (blue-sky & planes born for 3-strip color), finds director William Wellman going thru the motions on a wan love triangle for top-billed 22-yr-old Gene Tierney wooed by older flight instructor Preston Foster & only slightly less older British trainee John Sutton, whose touch of vertigo provides the rest of the drama. Will he make the cut and become an RAF pilot (and probably be shot down within weeks), or get sent down by a romantic rival? Wellman shows his usual lack of sensitivity, shaving the age difference between the men to a mere eight years. The dramatic loss made clear in a few, precious glimpses of heartbreakingly young real recruits (American, Brits, Chinese), looking like teenagers prepping to fight Nazis, Japs, All-comers). If Sutton had looked like one of these kids, you might have a movie. (Though fun to watch cinematographer Ernest Palmer struggle with the limitations of ‘40s TechniColor, flooding an entire bedroom with light from a single match.)
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Wellman just off ROXIE HART, a disappointing second iteration of CHICAGO; and THE OX-BOW INCIDENT, his famous anti-lynching Western, out next, a film that congratulates itself for standing against mob ‘justice’ on the innocent.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: Over at Warners, Michael Curtiz did a pair of these TechniColored WWII flyboy recruitment pics. Beating Pearl Harbor by months with DIVE BOMBER/’41 (best of the two), then pumping up the drama for Cagney in CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS/’42. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/dive-bomber-1941.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/captains-of-clouds-1942.html
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