The WWI Flyer
Posted: May 10th, 2012, 8:26 pm
I had a chance to watch a WWI flyer film today I hadn't seen before, Ace of Aces (1933). It's another John Monk Saunders screenplay starring Richard Dix. We had a pretty good conversation about The Last Flight a while back, and I thought it would be nice to have a thread dedicated to this unique genre.
Moira has written a seminal piece on Saunders on her blog http://moirasthread.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... n-air.html which is well worth reading.
Dix plays a sensitive sculptor who scoffs at the propaganda ginned up just prior to America's entry into the war. His fiancee (Elizabeth Allen) takes it a little more seriously and ends up breaking their engagement, calling him "yellow."
Jump cut to France and Dix is now a flyer. We see Dix, still a conscientious objector at heart, go out on his first sortie. He's hit by an enemy bullet, and seeing his own blood, changes his attitude. In time, he becomes a killing machine, an Ace of Aces. When he meets Allen later in the film, she is taken aback at how much he's changed.
I was supposed to be working while the film was playing, so I couldn't watch it as carefully as I would have liked. One thing I like about these screenplays is there's always an eloquent moment when one of the characters gives a speech about the horror and futility of war.
Maybe Ace of Aces isn't the best of the genre, but I'd certainly watch it again, as I've watched other WWI flyer pictures in my collection multiple times. The biplanes are so primitive, the flyers so gallant, the mystique so enduring.
Moira has written a seminal piece on Saunders on her blog http://moirasthread.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... n-air.html which is well worth reading.
Dix plays a sensitive sculptor who scoffs at the propaganda ginned up just prior to America's entry into the war. His fiancee (Elizabeth Allen) takes it a little more seriously and ends up breaking their engagement, calling him "yellow."
Jump cut to France and Dix is now a flyer. We see Dix, still a conscientious objector at heart, go out on his first sortie. He's hit by an enemy bullet, and seeing his own blood, changes his attitude. In time, he becomes a killing machine, an Ace of Aces. When he meets Allen later in the film, she is taken aback at how much he's changed.
I was supposed to be working while the film was playing, so I couldn't watch it as carefully as I would have liked. One thing I like about these screenplays is there's always an eloquent moment when one of the characters gives a speech about the horror and futility of war.
Maybe Ace of Aces isn't the best of the genre, but I'd certainly watch it again, as I've watched other WWI flyer pictures in my collection multiple times. The biplanes are so primitive, the flyers so gallant, the mystique so enduring.