Film Review: Air Force (1943)

When there is a need for propaganda films, it is always better if they are made by someone with experience and genuine talent. In the Second World War in the USA, that someone was Howard Hawks, one of the most celebrated directors of classic Hollywood, whose 1943 film Air Force manages to transcend its propaganda purpose and can still be appreciated as a fine piece of action cinema.

When the film was made, the USA still did not have a separate air service for its armed forces, and the title refers to the US Army Air Force, whose commander, General Henry “Hap” Arnold, came up with the idea for the film shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which marked the entry of the USA into the Second World War. The plot begins shortly before the event, on 6 December 1941 in San Francisco, where the crew of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, nicknamed “Mary Ann” and commanded by Captain Michael Aloysius “Irish” Quincannon (played by John Ridgley), is given an order to fly to the US base at Pearl Harbor. The mission seems routine and hardly dangerous, because the USA is still at peace. Everything changes when “Mary Ann” arrives at its destination and its crew see their base and other facilities devastated by a surprise Japanese attack. They do not get any rest, because the Japanese have also attacked US forces in the Philippines, where they need any plane they can get in order to fend off a superior enemy. Quincannon is ordered to fly to Clark Field airbase via the besieged US garrison at Wake Island. When they arrive at their destination, the crew of “Mary Ann” will experience the baptism of fire.

Air Force was produced when the war was not going that well for the USA and its allies, and there was arguably more need for morale-boosting war films than in later periods. Hawks, an accomplished aviator, seemed to be the perfect man for the job. He also understood that, since Americans used to look like underdogs during the first months of the war in the Pacific, he had to include action scenes in which they would triumph over a numerically superior adversary through their courage, discipline, and ingenuity. Those action scenes appear quite late in the film, but it is for good reason. As in any good action film, the audience needs to be invested in the fate of the characters, which means that the script by Dudley Nichols (later polished by William Faulkner) had to allow viewers to know them better. Exposition takes almost an hour and a half, but it is very well-made exposition that benefits from Nichols’ decision to treat each of the characters equally. Nine members of the “Mary Ann” crew might be different in rank, age, temperament, or ethnic background (not racial, as the US Army was still segregated along racial lines during the Second World War), but each is given time to be developed and each is played by a talented actor. Air Force does not feature any major star, which also benefits the film, as it does not have to follow the conventions of a particular kind of character surviving the ordeal.

Air Force is also great from a strictly technical standpoint. Warner Bros. studio enjoyed the full support of the US Army Air Force, which allowed the use of real B-17 bombers and other aircraft (including Republic P-43 Lancers, which stand in for Japanese “Zeros”). This was matched by rather impressive special effects and miniature work that work very well during the grand naval battle at the end, an event that did not actually follow history but was inspired by the Battle of the Coral Sea, which was being fought during production. That scene is really effective, even with the use of documentary stock footage, seamlessly edited into the live action. Unfortunately, a single shot of the Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Szent István, sunk during the First World War, ruins that scene, at least for viewers familiar with history and sensitive to such details. Even more problematic, at least from today’s standpoint, is an attempt to explain the American disaster at Pearl Harbor with a seemingly omnipresent Japanese-American fifth column that sabotages airfields and takes pot shots at isolated servicemen. Those scenes, which had nothing to do with the historical record, in many ways exploited and enhanced racist sentiments, and that makes Air Force one of the less acceptable U.S. Second World War propaganda films, despite its technical and artistic qualities. When the war ended, the film was mostly forgotten and is now considered one of the lesser works of Howard Hawks. Nevertheless, it was appreciated by true cinephiles, including Quentin Tarantino, who would, half a century later, pay homage with one of the memorable scenes in his Pulp Fiction.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)

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