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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 9307
Released: June 5, 2007 |
| Our Price: $9.50 |
| Used Price: $9.40 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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| Features:
Black & White Full Screen NTSC Subtitled | |
Editorial Review:
John Garfield, John Ridgely, and Gig Young star in this hard-hitting, realistic story that celebrates America's airborne heroes during WWII. Year: 1943 Director: Howard Hawks Starring: John Garfield, John Ridgely, Gig Young
Description of Air Force:
Director Howard Hawks casually referred to Air Force (1943) as his "contribution to the war effort." It's also a masterpiece, standing with John Ford's They Were Expendable as the best WWII films Hollywood made while the war was still on. On the evening of December 6, 1941, a B-17 flies out of San Francisco on a routine peacetime training mission to Hickam Field in Hawaii. While en route, the officers and crew overhear radio traffic of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ("Whatcha got there," somebody asks the radio operator, "Orson Welles?"). They touch down in a smoking world like a vision out of Dante, then hop from one Pacific outpost to the next as the clouds of war roil. The plane itself, the Mary Ann, is the movie's main character; the biggest star, John Garfield, actually gets last billing as her newly assigned tail gunner. Air Force is one of Hawks's supreme guys-doing-their-job movies, and the definitive war-movie portrait of America as a melting-pot of diverse individuals and types making common cause. The ensemble (Garfield, Gig Young, John Ridgely, Arthur Kennedy, the great Harry Carey, et al.) is superbly directed, there's a strong Dudley Nichols screenplay (with an uncredited contribution by William Faulkner) and breathtaking editing of the battle scenes (which won George Amy an Oscar), and the camerawork is by James Wong Howe in peak form.
Air Force Reviews:
Great, campy dialog 
2009-09-11 - Air force is one of my favorites especially the character developement by John Garfield and James Brown.Harry Carey and his battered baseball cap. George Tobias with his comic relief. The wartime propaganda is great. A very good period piece film.
Air Force DVD 
2009-07-17 - "Just as advertised" isn't always so. This purchase was "as advertised." Got it within a reasonable time frame, in good condition, without a hitch. So far, I've never had a bad purchase with Amazon.com. Thanks.
Howard Hawk's World War Two Contribution is one of the best of it's kind made.
2009-06-20 - Air Force(1943) is a film that pulls no punches. A gritty and violent piece that is only comparable to war era classics like John Ford's "They Were Expendable(1945)" and "Bataan(1943)" for it's honesty and brutality.
The film's plot follows a Bomber group en route to Hawaii when Pearl Harbor is attacked and the crew attempts to find a place in the war.
Hawks creates characters that are typically likeable and lively but this creates a much more tragic contrast with the hellish view of war.
Despite the film's patriotic flavor, this film still manages to make war look both heroic and completely unglamorous.
Expert cameraman James Wong Howe captures images of combat that look like something straight form the inferno. In particular the haunting scenes in Pearl Harbor shortly after the attack on December 7, 1941. THe image of the crew looking down at the aftermath is quite chilling and unforgettable. Add to that the scenes on Wake, where the soldiers know there terrible fates and accept it.Eacha nd every battle scene is incredibly effective and thye saty with the viewer for much longer than the standard propaganda piece of the time.
Credit must be given to a first rate cast to represent the "lost" crew trying to find a place as this chaotic war breaks out in the Pacific. John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy, George Tobias et all. play there parts exceptionally well. It's intriguing that the film's most recognizable star, John Garfield, is the lowest billed. He's great as the tough gunner of the crew and his scene on the airfield using a handheld .30 machine gun and shooting down Japanese Zeros with Harry Carey Sr. is one of the cinema's great action sequences.
Special nod must be given to Carey Sr. who brings an emotional complexity to his role and gruffness that makes him possibly the most endearing of the lot. His scene upon learning the fate of his son is a classic screen moment.
This is a first rate War film that is required viewing for the Hawks completist(which should be all true film buffs) and for all World War Two fanatics as well.
Terrific film and one of my personal favorite war films of the era.
Air Force
2009-05-25 - This is one of my favorte early World War II movies. It is far from historically correct (I.E. Japanese ground troups are assumed on several Hawaiian Islands), but well acted and full of the stars of the day.
"Air Force" - entertainment AND a time capsule from 1942!
2009-05-05 - The motion picture "Air Force" was released in February 1943 by Warner Brothers. It is worth getting hold of!
The film, which obviously had been written by someone with access to the records of the 19th Bomb Group, which had been originally based at Clark Field, and also the records of the 7th Bomb Group, which was starting to reinforce the 19th BG, follows the adventurous flight of "'B-17D''05564'" and its crew as they begin a ferry flight from San Francisco (this would have been Hamilton Field, but the actual air base is never identified) to Hickam Field, Hawaii, thence via Wake Island to the Phillippines, the final destination, where the aircraft is shot up, crash landed, repaired, and, on its way to Australia, helps defeat a Japanese invasion fleet. During preflight maintenance and the first, San Francisco-Hickam, leg of the ferry flight, we are introduced to the crew and their histories.
The aircraft is actually a B-17B, evidenced by the offset cabin-top dome.
This film is worth acquiring and keeping, for its views of rare airplanes as well.
