The High and the Mighty

A Honolulu-to-San Francisco flight is beset by engine trouble without and the passengers' personal dramas within, but thanks to the daring of the veteran co-pilot (John Wayne), they come through unscathed. The all-star disaster epic, 15 years before Airport codified the genre, and in that vein it remains good soapy entertainment 60 years on; the script is often absurd and given to strange tangents, but the cast is worth watching and Dmitri Tiomkin's Oscar-winning score is lovely.

Wellman's take on disaster films was to develop each character and use the action as a backdrop. This formula was successful at the box office and copied in the Airport movies of the "70s. Then later spoofed in the Airplane movies. While it was a popular and impactful film, I found it average and forgettable.

30s melodrama made in the 50s? Blueprint of disaster films, with its professional care for populist melodrama and spectacular suspense. The utter cheesiness of a lot of this is what AIRPLANE! was spoofing, but it's funnier here, in its purer form. So very entertaining.

Decent film, the original air disaster film. John Wayne was the only reason I watched this.

The only thing this movie was missing was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

It's a perfectly sweet and charming film, although some elements have aged really very poorly; particuarly in terms of some of the broad characterisations and relationships. There are a couple of really good scenes though; my favourite being a great little scene where we are first given a sign there is something is wrong with the plane and the mirror the hostess is using vibrates unnaturally. Funny how little scenes like that can sometimes lift a movie!? Simple, dated, but enjoyable.

Character development felt a little too much like filler and much of it was unresolved in the end