Editor’s Note: Freeline Media’s movie critic, Mike Fried, has movie recommendations for those folks caught up in the blizzards slamming much of the country this week. Hunker down, and get that DVD player turned on!
By MIKE FRIED
AIRPORT (1970)
**** (with an explanation).
During a freaking snowstorm, a plane lands at a midwestern airport and cuts the turn while taxiing back to the terminal and gets stuck in the snow. The general manager of the airport has to deal with this issue and with many other issues, including a pain in the neck wife, protests by residents for noise pollution, a pain in the ass pilot brother-in-law and, oh yeah, there’s a guy on a plane with a bomb.
This is the granddaddy of soap opera disaster movies. Hysterically and undeservedly nominated for Best Picture and 9 other Academy Awards, this is such a cheesy …. yet enjoyable movie. The Today Show’s film critic, Judith Crist, called this movie “the best movie of 1944,” and she is not wrong. It’s a Grand Hotel of the air. Yet audiences flocked to it and it grossed $100 million worldwide — and that’s 1970 dollars. A totally crappy movie doesn’t do that type of business.
Overall the movie was nominated for 10 Oscars. Two of the three deserving nominations were both for Best Supporting Actress: Helen Hayes and Maureen Stapleton were nominated. Hayes, as a grandmotherly stowaway, won for her comedic role and a lifetime of work. Stapleton, as the wife of the man with the bomb, deserved the Oscar, for her pathos-filled performance.
It’s a soap opera, nothing more, just as Arthur Hailey’s novel was. But George Seaton’s script and direction tries mightily to rise above the source novel. And in many cases it does, especially with the humor aboard the airplane as various characters interact (especially the pain in the ass passenger — isn’t there one on every flight?!?!) as well as the tension when it is revealed that the passenger has a bomb. The “action” scenes aboard the plane are absolutely terrific. The rest of the movie is very soapy.
On some level the script succeeds. Besides the action scenes aboard the airplane, the scenes with Stapleton and Van Heflin are excellent. Heflin’s performance — in his final film — should have been nominated. He’s a man who doesn’t want to bomb the plane but he can’t provide for his wife. He feels his life insurance will help her out. His pathos is palpable. He is just that good. This is the Van Heflin of 3:10 To Yuma. Strong but unsure of himself.
Burt Lancaster (as the airport GM) hated this movie, and you can tell. He is not in the groove and while top-billed, he is going through the motions. He is right in there with soap opera elements especially when complaining about his wife. But he does throw out the patented Burt Lancaster laugh at one point. Despite hating the movie, Lancaster made a ton of money. Plus, he got the studio to finance several smaller, less commercial pictures. And when he gets to vent his rage, he’s classic Burt.
George Kennedy started his four Airport film runs as Joe Patroni, the wiseass TWA chief mechanic who is drafted by Lancaster to get the plane out of the snow so the runway can be reopened. He, as Patroni, was the best in this movie. He is every bit Dragline (in Cool Hand Luke) but in an airport setting.
But the movie is propelled by Dean Martin as the pain in the neck pilot. Who wouldn’t want Dino to be flying their airplane? He brings a much needed sense of humor to the film, even when he’s acting serious, despite his creepy love affair with stewardess Gwen who is half his age. Yucch. He’s a bully and he knows it and he doesn’t care (especially when Frank Sinatra ain’t around).
But who else could use pilot doublespeak when the doomed airplane turns back and a young kid noticed that the stars are different. When the kid asks him about it, Dino replies, “You have a young navigator here! Well, I’ll tell you son … Due to a Cetcil wind, Dystor’s vectored us into a 360-tarson of slow air traffic. Now we’ll maintain this Borden hold until we get the Forta Magnus clearance from Melnics.” One of my favorite Dino movie moments ever.
One mention about the score. The theme music is out of this world and is one of my favorite movie scores of all time. Alfred Newman (uncle of Randy Newman) was nominated for his 45th Academy Award for his thrilling score.
Airplane! was based on the movie Zero Hour! almost word for word, but there are many scenes in Airplane, especially on the plane itself, that are heavily influenced by this movie.
Dad loved this movie and it was his first VHS purchase. He and I used to watch this after we shoveled the first snow of every season. That’s why I’m watching this tonight. For dad, I’m giving this an extra star. Miss you dad.
The rest of you, WATCH IT! It’s ridiculous but it gave birth to the disaster film genre, even if it was bested by its progeny.
Normally I’d give this a 3/5 but for Dad it gets a 4/5
And if it helps, Kino Lorber’s 4K transfer is fantastic.
Michael Fried has no formal training in movies, except having watched over 26,000+ movies — if not more — in his 60-plus years on this planet, starting with Goldfinger as his first cinema experience. He knows what he likes and he knows what he doesn’t like, and it’s quite often different from the conventional wisdom. He knows that the best franchise is Godzilla and he loves action movies and comedies. He has not been nominated for any awards except some boring insurance awards which has no applicability to movies (with the possible exceptions of Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity and John Cassavettes’ Big Trouble). He is part of a team that won the 1980 SUNY Albany Trivia content by correctly guessing the question, “Who played the president of Klopstockia in Million Dollar Legs?” So he has that going for him, which is nice.
Contact Mike at moviemike3@yahoo.com and mike.fried@yahoo.com.
