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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 3932
Released: March 27, 2007 |
| Our Price: $5.78 |
| Used Price: $5.79 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Errol Flynn and David Niven star as roustabout French Corp fighter pilots who come face-to-face with the harsh realities of war. Basil Rathbone is outstanding as the Squadron Commander.
Description of The Dawn Patrol:
The Dawn Patrol is a beautiful title for two very good movies Warner Bros. made eight years apart, in 1930 and 1938. Both tell the same World War I story (which won a 1930 Academy Award for John Monk Saunders), about a succession of flight commanders at a British air base in France. Each officer in turn has to keep sending pilots out on dangerous, often insane missions in flimsy, patched-up planes, then pray that even half get back alive. The job is soul-killing for the commandants and deadly for their comrades and friends. Make that former friends.
It's the later, Errol Flynn version of The Dawn Patrol that's won DVD release. The original is rarely shown because, despite direction by Howard Hawks, it suffers from the stiffness and some overly declamatory acting characteristic of the early talkie era. Perhaps more to the point, the remake's cast has greater marquee value: Flynn and David Niven as hotshots Courtney and Scott; Basil Rathbone as Major Brand, the tortured commander whom Flynn will be obliged to succeed; Donald Crisp, Melville Cooper, and Barry Fitzgerald as staff officers and noncoms. Edmund Goulding's direction is proficient, if also impersonal.
So the remake has the edge as smooth entertainment, though not the original's raw power (or Griffith veteran Richard Barthelmess's tender, anguished performance as Courtney). And the best parts of the 1938 version are the original film: all the aerial footage--bombings, crashes, breathtaking low-level flying, and wobbly takeoffs in the glow of early morning--is Hawks's. Ideally, Warner Video should have issued both films, and in one box. --Richard T. Jameson
The Dawn Patrol Reviews:
I am a little puzzled 
2009-12-10 - This is an excellent film and well worth watching for anyone that likes Flynn or Rathbone.
But I am trying to figure out why someone at Amazon thinks Mel Blanc is in the film (the voice of so many Looney Tunes characters).
The Dawn Patrol 
2009-11-07 - ...This is a Classic film starring Errol Flynn, David Niven, and Basil Rathbone.
It takes place during WWI in an airfield somewhere in France, and deals with the changes in attitudes that come with increased responsibilities..
...Rathbone is the Flight Commander, angry at his superiors for ordering him to constantly send out green pilots on certain suicide missions, and upset with his best pilots, Errol Flynn and David Niven, for disliking him because he has to order them to take out these new pilots and watch them get killed dawn after dawn.
...In spite of that, Flynn and Niven break the rules and enjoy themselves to the fullest between missions, something that Rathbone cannot engage in due to his position and rank, and he has a love/hate relationship with them for their
cavalier attitude of seasoned combat pilots who realize that any day could be their last.
...The tables get turned when Rathbone gets promoted to headquarters, and has the pleasure of handing over the command position to Flynn. The shoe is on the other foot kind of thing. Very Quickly, Flynn becomes the same character as Rathbone became under the burden of responsibility, and Niven becomes the Flynn character, despising his best buddy for making him take out green pilots to see them die on each mission.
...The plot gets more complicated when Niven's younger brother turns up one day as one of the green pilots...but you will have to watch the movie as I wont spoil it here by telling you the rest.
...This is classic Flynn...dashing, young, handsome and reckless...with plenty of lighter moments between him and Niven, who gives an outstanding performance in this role. It is a buddy movie with serious undertones, enhanced with some great flying sequences and biplane dog-fights.
...It is easy to watch this film and see it as the grand-daddy of modern adventure films like Indiana Jones, set against the carnage of the Great War.
"What a rotten war." -- Flynn
2009-06-24 - "Gentlemen, keep the war going please. We are going out to roam in a few gutters." -- Flynn
During the first decade of sound films, it offered an opportunity to remake great silent films and some early talkies which were made before there was a firm grasp on this new medium. It usually proved to be a disappointment, however, as the magic captured so beautifully in one art form, or the beginning stages of another, rarely could be recaptured. Such is not the case with The Dawn Patrol. The great Howard Hawks had helmed the original 1930 version of John Monk Saunders' story starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. The 1938 version directed by Edmund Goulding for WB is quite fabulous on it's own terms, thanks in large part to the performances of Errol Flynn and David Niven, and the faithfulness shown to the original source material.
Seton I. Miller and Dan Totheroh stayed true to Saunders' story the first time around, and WB stayed true by reusing it. While this version of a beleaguered squadron during WWI and the camaraderie of its weary pilots doesn't have the majestic ariel footage of Wellman's silent masterpiece, Wings, it isn't far behind. Flynn and Niven are terrific as the veterans who keep watching younger and younger replacements to their squadron go down to Von Richter's more experienced pilots across enemy lines in 1915 France. Courtney (Flynn) knows it's suicide sending them up in ariel combat with only a few hours training under their belt but must follow orders. Their resentment for Brand (Basil Rathbone), who gives those orders, seethes. But neither know the heavy burden on Brand, who constantly argues with headquarters for more training time, but must also follow orders.
Flynn is solid as the quiet hero but Niven sparkles as the happy-go-lucky Scott. When Courtney and Scott make a daring but foolhardy raid on a German squadron, destroying them while they are still on the ground, it sets in motion a promotion which changes Courtney's perspective, who is now in Brand's shoes. When Scott's young brother shows up as one of the green replacements, Courtney can not show favoritism and in the fallout the two friends stop speaking. Goulding shows the camaraderie of the pilots, which runs so deep it even extends to the enemy. During better times, there are hilarious references to a wild night as Courtney and Scott paint the town red, related to Brand by the furious top brass.
A dire one pilot mission deep across enemy lines punctuates this film with a spectacular ariel battle. For those who haven't seen this, I cannot reveal who is involved or what transpires. This is a fine film which kept the atmosphere of its predecessor and makes for a very entertaining and quietly moving film about WWI and the toll it took on men who flew in planes shot up and patched together with whatever was available. It says a great deal about courage and male bonding, and war itself. A marvelous and worthy remake.
outstanding picture
2009-06-05 - "They dont make em like they usta",and maybe they do and maybe they dont, but this movie in my mind is a classic example of the great pictures of the 1930s.The movie makers and their audience were products of their time, and even if the makers/audience are different today, many movie fans can still recognize great pictures when they see one and the Dawn Patrol is certainly one of these.
Command Responsibility...
2009-05-26 - 1938's "Dawn Patrol" captures a theme familiar to fans of the war movie genre: the awful responsibility of command amid the fearful attrition of combat. In "Dawn Patrol", Errol Flynn and David Niven portray veteran Royal Flying Corps pilots Courtney and Scott, grim survivors of aerial combat over the 1915 Western Front of World War I. The two men fly hair-raising missions each day in rickety aircraft and carouse drunkenly at night, while replacements show up and die before they can even unpack their bags. The commander of their 59th Flying Squadron, Major Brand (a superbly conflicted Basil Rathbone), wrestles with high command over impossible orders but resolutely sends the men out each day on mission.
When an opposing German flying squadron challenges the 59th by dropping a pair of trench boots on their aerodrome, Courtney and Scott defy orders to return the insult. In a thrilling flying sequence, the two men bomb and strafe the enemy aerodrome, then survive additional hazards on the return trip. The two pilots face court-martial, but in a twist of fate, Major Brand is promoted, leaving a stunned Captain Courtney to fill his shoes as squadron commander. Courtney soon discovers the terrible responsibility that comes with command, including the loss of his friendship with Scott. When a vitally important but almost certainly suicidal mission comes down, Courtenay faces a heart-breaking choice.
"Dawn Patrol" features entertaining repartee between real-life friends Flynn and Niven, a vision of fellowship amid dispair among the fliers, and some excellent flying sequences featuring World War I aircraft. The film offers its own take on a theme repeated in "Twelve O'Clock High" and "Command Decision" and is very highly recommended to fans of those movies.
