The High and the Mighty (1954)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

You'll enjoy this movie even if you haven't seen "Airplane". But if you enjoy "Airplane" you'll see the setups for the jokes contained in "Airplane".

How this film can be taken seriously is beyond me. The premise of a plane in trouble over the ocean is interesting. But this movie then completely destroys any such optimistic anticipation. A few of the highlights:Sarcastic comments from airline clerks gossiping about their passengers. Joy Kim as a caricature of the simpleton Asian who fawns over Americans. This along with an equally slow-minded Swedish immigrant with an accent that sounds half Italian. What does this say about arrogant attitudes toward foreigners in the early 50's? An embarrassingly endless closeup scene of makeup removal for unknown effect. Uninteresting flash backs of unsympathetic passengers solely interested in maximizing their personal pleasures. Stone-faced John Wayne saving the day by slapping his copilot silly.As another reviewer said, I wished that all 4 engines had failed and the whole lot of them put to a quick end, along with this painfully tasteless and tacky movie.

. . . leading to days of Wild Speculation. (Since it was Samsonite, this locked luggage had remain intact--save for a couple scratches--while slicing the shingles and roof boards as if they were wet cardboard, and cracking the cement slab below.) We wondered if a distant neighbor was had been tinkering with a high-powered Trebuchet. Had ISIS invented a trunk bazooka? Maybe tornadoes were becoming more selective with their targets. But after watching THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY last night, our family shouted, "Mystery solved!" It turns out that whenever an airliner is running behind schedule, they just have the passengers form into a "bucket brigade" line and have them pass all of their carry-on luggage, galley equipment, and cargo holdings to a cabin door. Then all this stuff is shoved off the plane (not unlike the hot air balloons of the 1800s dropping their ballast or sand bags to stay aloft). Airline crew do NOT give a second thought to anyone or anything down below. That's why fliers are called THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY: They have enough money to be better than anyone else. Why shouldn't they Lord it over we Groundlings? In this flick, Flight 420 is devoid of Black faces. This is a "Jim Crow" Era film. If Blacks had to travel, they generally walked back then. Warner Bros. throws one warning after another into THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY. Two of the most prominent cautions here: 1)Beware of U.S. Vice-Presidents! A character named "Humphrey Agnew" shoots his gun in the passenger cabin! 2)Expect any pilot nicknamed "Sully" to at least try to ditch your plane into the water, Warner warns. John Wayne has to slap lead pilot "Sully" Sullivan (played by Robert Stack) twice in his face to make him land Flight 420 on a runway, instead of ditching it in the Pacific. (It's even funnier when the nun gets to the head of the Pilot-Slapper line with a pipe wrench in AIRPLANE, a remake of THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY.)

The phrase "they don't make 'em like they used to" frequently refers to movies made long ago that are much better than most movies made now. But it can just as often refer to movies that aren't necessarily that good, and weren't really that good even at the time, but which carry such a freight of nostalgia with them that watching them all these years later makes us realize we no longer care all that much how good they are, just so long as they're still fun to watch.Such is the case with "The High and the Mighty," a cornball disaster movie about an airplane in peril that set the blueprint for films like "Airport" and "The Poseidon Adventure" two decades later. Actually, those movies from the 70s are much cornier than this one, so it is really a testament to how good "The High and the Mighty" really is that it holds up well in comparison to movies made much later. Its success is largely due to veteran director William Wellman, who was much more exciting when directing grittier stuff like "The Public Enemy," but who worked across so many genres ("A Star Is Born," "Battleground," "Wings") that he knew how to make a popcorn movie that you could also take seriously. But much credit for the film's success must also be given to the film's cast, which features John Wayne and Robert Stack as the pilots of the plane, and a host of passengers, each with his/her own story, but which is headlined by two marvelous actresses who both received Best Supporting Actress nominations for their work in this film, Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling.Movies like this are fascinating to watch now, because they work in so many of the cultural topics that were dominating public discourse at the time. This film brings up the atom bomb, American relations with Korea, disintegrating marriages, you name it. It's like a Cliffs Notes version of everything that was wrong with the 1950s.In addition to the Oscar nominations for Trevor and Sterling, the film garnered a nomination for Wellman's direction and brought three-time Oscar winning editor Ralph Dawson ("A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Anthony Adverse," "The Adventures of Robin Hood") his fourth nomination. Also, legendary composer Dimitri Tiomkin won his third Oscar for the film's famous score, and he inexplicably received a nomination, with lyricist Ned Washington, for Best Original Song, even though there is no song in the movie.Grade: B+EDIT: I have since found out how the film was nominated for Best Original Song even though no song appears in the movie. Apparently the main theme had lyrics, but the song was pulled from the film by a studio exec during its previews. Tiomkin protested and fought to have one print of the film released in Los Angeles with the song intact so that it would eligible for an Academy Award. The studio obliged, and Tiomkin got his Oscar nomination.