The Silver Screen Oasis

Night Flight 1933



I wanted to thank Moira for suggesting this movie ... I wanted to see this movie for the past 20 years and its a great movie filled with suspense, drama, and excitement. What a Cast ... All-Star ... Everyone giving it all ... I love Helen Hayes in this movie and most importantly the heroics of Barrymore, Gable, and Montgomery.

Myrna Loy was also outstanding ... and I just loved the ending of all those ghost planes flying to the horizon ... it was climax at its very best. This is a great film and I enjoyed watching it ... my only regrets is that I wished the movie was longer ... I loved it.

Omigosh! I'm glad that someone else saw this movie, kingme.

I just saw Night Flight (1933) on TCM last night. This is one of the most lustrously beautiful '30s movies I've ever seen (and that decade had some gorgeous black and white cinematography)--thanks to MGM's production values and Oliver Marsh's crisp, yet incandescent cinematography. I realize that Antoine de Saint-Exupery was not particularly happy with this cinematic version of his lyric prose, but one aspect of the novel that is captured exquisitely is the story's enchantment with the intricacy of machinery and the sense of unreality and danger aloft that Saint-Exupery conveyed in his remarkably spiritual book.

This palpable visual quality made legendary actors such as Clark Gable and the Barrymore brothers look more alive than I have ever seen. It was as though you could reach out and touch their arm, asking them to live just awhile longer than they did, staying just as they were when this movie was made. For me, the film did not generate the same quality in the dialogue and in the acting (Robert Montgomery seems particularly lightweight for me), but it is otherwise very well done.

Does anyone know if there were particularly different lenses or a certain kind of film stock used to photograph this movie? Here's a nice (if far from perfect print) compilation of scenes from Night Flight attempting to capture some of the spirit of the novel:
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I watched it too. It looked great. I was thinking there wasn't one shot that John Barrymore had that he wasn't partly in the shadows. I think he looked older here then he did in "Midnight." I'm sure that was by design.

I thought the film was on;y okay. Too many substories going on and not really enough time to do them justice. Robert Montgomery almost need not bothered to have showed up. A couple of shots in the plane, dinner with Lionel and that was it. Gable spent more writing notes than speaking. It seemed a bit disjointed.

However, there were great flying scenes. Gable's final flight and ending were pretty intense. RO's intro was very interesting. Someday they should put out some reports or articles on how they go about clearing rights on these films. To think it took 70+ years for this to see the light of day again is pretty interesting in itself.

Glad you saw it too, Chris. I thought that the best acting was the most naturalistic turn by William Gargan. I agree about the lack of dialogue and interaction with other people by Gable, but the camera loved him and he rarely looked more alive and so young.

This is a cute, OLD, movie. A good example of cinematic storytelling, outstanding for its time, if a little dated now. Still entertaining.

Whoa!!!!!

"Lolita" is one of the funniest, darkest, macabre black comedies I've seen in a while. I've seen this movie several times over the years. Hmmmmm...when did it change?

I think my friend would call that his favorite Kubrick film. I'm not sure. He likes it a lot.

Watched "The Big Picture" (1989) directed by Christopher Guest.

This is the film he made before "Waiting for Guffman" and his improvisational movies. It is about a film student (Kevin Bacon) who nearly loses his soul in Hollywood. It is very funny, if, perhaps, a little too "inside" for most people. (And frankly, I have never found Martin Short, who plays Bacon's agent, all that funny.) Still it has a nice charm to it, and the brief dream sequences, in which Bacon's character sees his life in classic film style, are fun.

Just watched "Cowboy" (1958) directed by Delmer Daves.

Terrific Western. Jack Lemmon is a hotel clerk who signs up for a cattle drive. Glen Ford is the tough cattleman. Terrific color photography and great interplay between members of the cast. It makes the Western look fresh, because the action (cowboys loose in a fancy hotel, a cattle stampede to break up an Indian attack and a Mexican game in which you put a ring around a bull's horn) has not been done to death. Both Ford and Lemmon are first-rate, and their conflict is quite believable. An underrated movie that is very enjoyable.

James Gregory as the special prosecutor, repeating his smarmy role

Did he ever play anything else? No really, I am asking... does anyone know of any roles where he DIDN'T play a rumpled, smarmy, bigoted ________________ (you fill in the blank)?

He's so easy to hate, it took me years to realize what a really fine actor he was. Now I am happy when he shows up in a movie or TV show, instead of feeling a little sick to my stomach.

As for James Gregory, I was going to say that he played a gorilla in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes." He might not have been rumpled and smarmy beneath all that ape makeup, but his character sure was bigoted, so I guess that wasn't much of a stretch.

Although I guess there were a few moments of sympathy for his Inspector Luger on "Barney Miller" here and there.

That's true. Barney Miller was a good series. That's where I first was able to get past the wrinkled suit and the irritatingly pompous demeanor to find he was a good actor. Apparently he was in the first episode of Twilight Zone entitled "Where is Everybody?".

Did he ever play anything else? No really, I am asking... does anyone know of any roles where he DIDN'T play a rumpled, smarmy, bigoted ________________ (you fill in the blank)?

NIGHTFALL (Jacques Tourneur 1957), as I recall.

You have a terrific memory to place James Gregory in the Twilight Zone episode "Where Is Everybody?" I could only remember Earl Holliman who was on screen almost constantly as the "last man in the world." Gregory only showed up at the twist ending.