Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with today’s installment of A Movie A Day.
[For those now joining us, A Movie A Day is my attempt at filling in gaps in my film knowledge. My DVD collection is thousands strong, many of them films I haven’t seen yet, but picked up as I scoured used DVD stores. Each day I’ll pull a previously unseen film from my collection or from my DVR and discuss it here. Each movie will have some sort of connection to the one before it, be it cast or crew member.]
I haven’t fact checked this, but I’d be willing to bet that George Lucas patterned a lot of the dogfights in the original STAR WARS film after the opening air-battle of 1942’s FLYING TIGERS starring John Wayne. There is a checking in scene straight out of the approach to the Death Star. Instead of “Red 5 standing by!” we have Wayne in the lead and his airmen signing in “Blue 3, check!” and “Blue 2, okay!”
The shot selection and pacing is straight out of STAR WARS, and the Japanese gunning windows look suspiciously like the TIE fighter windows.
Now, I know Lucas patterned the Death Star trench run on DAMBUSTERS and that’s clear as day when you watch that film, but I’m sure some STAR WARS trivia super genius can comment below on whether or not Lucas has ever cited FLYING TIGERS as well.
The flick is set in 1941 as a group of American volunteers are in China, protecting the citizens from an unrelenting Japanese aerial bombing. They are mercenaries, I guess, getting paid for each downed enemy plane, but it’s dangerous work, with loses damn near every time they fly.
John Wayne plays Capt. Jim Gordon (I guess this was before he moved to Gotham), leader of the brash young pilots. He’s got a thing going with a beautiful nurse on the base played by Anna Lee, who we follow over from yesterday’s THE GHOST & MRS. MUIR (she played the creepy George Sanders’ wife). Anna Lee is a gorgeous woman and she’s been very good in other work I’ve seen her in, but I have to say she was my least favorite thing about this movie.
Her performance is mechanic, by-the-numbers. She’s nice to look at, but her character really needed more personality and I think Lee had the material to do it, just couldn’t pull it together.
But let’s not focus on the negative because I really enjoyed the flick, mostly for the camaraderie between the pilots. The structure is a bit weird, but not in a bad way. Being a Republic picture, I’m sure John Wayne was always intended to be the top star, but his Jim Gordon isn’t really the focus of the movie.
Instead, the movie is centered on John Carroll’s Woody Jason, a brash show-off of a pilot. He has nerve, gusto, but he’s also greedy, in it for the money and he doesn’t like to play as part of a well-oiled machine. Instead he always rushes out of the group, taking down planes. It’s dangerous, but he’s good at it.
Unfortunately, these tactics end up weakening the overall defenses of the squadron, leading to the death of one of the more liked pilots in the squad.
This changes Woody. They don’t make it explicitely clear if he could have done anything to prevent it, but we do know he was the closest to Edmund MacDonald’s Blackie Bales when he had to bail out. The dude opened his chute too early and left himself a giant white target for a Japanese fighter. It was up to Woody to protect him… he was closest and free at the time, but he didn’t. He says a Jap plane got in his way and he had to deal with him, but the other pilots suspect he saw another plane to add to growing bank account and went for that instead of playing defense for his comrade.
Whatever is the truth we’re not told and we don’t need to know. That’s not important. What’s important is this “makes him a man” as he admits later to Wayne. It really hits him hard and he shows the first signs of real humanity, flying off to privately meet with Blackie’s wife, exaggerating Blackie’s accomplishments and giving her most of the money he’s made shooting down Jap planes.
Of all the characters, the only one who is at all different by the end of the movie is Woody Jason. Wayne’s Jim Gordon is exactly the same, as are the other pilots, so the real center of this film is John Carroll, not John Wayne.
The effects work holds up really well still to this day. In fact, I’d say the full size planes on gimbals look more fake than the miniature planes. The effects were even nominated at the Oscars that year.
The timeline of this film overlaps with Pearl Harbor, the final mission being one not of Mercs but of official US pilots taking out an important supply bridge. It actually made me wonder if someone could cut an epic movie together out of John Wayne’s WW2 Pacific movies, like a 6 hour movie that’d impress the shit out of Terrence Malick. Just in the films we’ve covered in the AMAD list you could do it… You have this one with Wayne as Merc the year before Pearl Harbor, IN HARM’S WAY where he’s a ship’s captain at Pearl Harbor, THE SANDS OF IWO JIMA where he’s a foot soldier on the ground… I’m sure a really fascinating movie could be drawn together, with Wayne essentially playing all the major roles himself.
The action in the movie is exciting and the stakes are real, but there’s a light tone to the movie I can’t quite explain. It doesn’t feel trivial, there are some real emotional punches, like hearing Blackie’s wife crying behind the door after she put on a brave face for Woody… but there’s a light tone to the whole thing, a sense of fun and adventure.
Final Thoughts: Flying Tigers is an entertaining movie still to this day. The film broke box office records upon its release and I can tell why. On top of being a fun rollercoaster ride of a flick, it was released not even a year after the actual attack on Pearl Harbor when the US was glued to the progress of the war. Interesting moment in time and fascinating how quickly they churned these out back then.
Here’s what we have lined up for the next week:
Tuesday, November 4th: EXECUTIVE ACTION (1973)
Wednesday, November 5th: THE BUSY BODY (1967)
Thursday, November 6th: IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963)
Friday, November 7th: LIBELED LADY (1936)
Saturday, November 8th: UP THE RIVER (1930)
Sunday, November 9th: DOCTOR BULL (1933)
Monday, November 10th: JUDGE PRIEST (1934)
So, I guess the movie gods have a rather twisted sense of humor making my Election Day AMAD EXECUTIVE ACTION, a political assassination flick. I swear I didn’t program it that way. We’re following director David Miller!
I don’t need to remind you folks, I’m sure, but get out and vote today if you haven’t been able to vote early. I have my leanings and know what I want to see happen, but I won't urge you one way or the other. What matters is that everybody exercises his or her right today.
See you tomorrow for EXECUTIVE ACTION!
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
