Wing and a Prayer (1944)

To me, this movie is perfection.

Memorable, crazy movie

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Combining actual battle footage with dramatic recreations, "Wing and a Prayer" starts months after Pearl Harbor with the question, "Where is the Navy, and why aren't they doing anything?" The answer is very simple---they weren't ready, and the Naval commander (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) admits this, along with the fact that Pearl Harbor took a bigger beating than the United States wanted to admit. It takes months for the ship commanded by Charles Bickford (and his assistants, Don Ameche and Dana Andrews) to see combat. They had brief contacts with the Japanese which caused a few casualties, as well as having several accidents that proved this ship was not ready to confront the enemy. When the big battle does occur, it is obvious that this ship needed extra time for training to confront Japan head on.Seriously looking at what was going on in the Pacific, the film is more than just gripping propaganda with an all-star cast. It is the view of what happens when men gather to fight. They don't just go out there with guns loaded or bombs ready. It takes a lot of strategy and an intelligent battle plan to fight for a common cause against evil. In addition to the three stars I already mentioned, such familiar faces as William Eythe and Henry (Harry) Morgan are featured. An amusing small part of the storyline involves a fictional character who carries an Oscar on the plane with him that is later revealed to be one of Betty Grable's partners in a magazine photo kiss. Grable, along with Alice Faye, appears in a brief clip from "Tin Pan Alley", used over a split scene between the sailors watching the film and the commanders discovering they are in enemy territory. The scene of the film breaking, being fixed, and then all of a sudden being called for duty is unforgettable in this message of priorities. There are plenty of moving scenes, yet not one speech of "why we fight" or "why we must win". The honesty of human error is explored and adds to the reality of the situation, making this one of the most prominent of all war movies made during that time.

Wing and a Prayer (1944)This is a Navy film made in 1944, set in early 1942. That says a lot to start--it's realistic, but it's also meant for support the troops, support the families back home, and avoid giving the enemy any information that might hurt the U.S. This one is set in the Pacific on an aircraft carrier, so there are both conventional sailors as well as pilots. Much of the movie is about ordinary down time, which builds up the interpersonal stuff, and gives the range of types on the ship--up to a limit (no minorities, for example).There were a lot of movies made during the war about the war, and most employed a star or two to give them an audience. Here we have Dana Andrews, already a stalwart at this early point in his career, and Don Ameche, who was the bigger name at the time. But what makes the movies distinctive beyond this is always some twist, some specific aspect of the war that gets highlighted. The main one here is the ship is on a special mission to head toward the fringes of Japanese controlled water and give the impression that the U.S. Navy is scared and incompetent. This makes for a lot of tension after awhile because the men really want to fight, and they are told to turn away. It's an interesting angle (with not a lot of historical truth to it, apparently). But it shows in part how the Navy had highly sophisticated plans that the average Joe couldn't and didn't know about. And so everyone should just be confident, everyone including all the folks watching it on Main Street, far from being able to help or knowing the truth.The other unique twist is that one of the pilots is an Academy Award Winning actor. It's clear from the first action scene that he's not really competent, but he's cute and popular, gets lots of mail, and he carries his Oscar statuette with him everyone (including on missions). A fun Hollywood twist...and of course, it isn't left alone. All of this, the ruse, the actor, the whole waiting game, is a set up for a spectacular finish.Trivia notes: There is a 16mm movie shown to the troops during fun time, and it's called "Tin Pan Alley," a 1940 Betty Grable flick with lots of flesh. It's naturally a hit with the men. And it's streamable on Netflix. Naturally I had to watch it...so look for my review of that one, too. Not half bad, but…. one of the moments that is a surprise (and a deflection) is when a plane takes off and crashes, and during some of the shots of the rescue there are mistakenly other ships in the distance. That last 20 minutes is great war film stuff, including a unique section where the action is told only through sound. It's a small but brilliant addition to a strong, somewhat straight forward film.

Yet another Boy's Own Paper take on the war in the Pacific. Although there are several candidates - Don Ameche, William Eythe, Dana Andrews, Charles Bickford - for leading man the footage is fairly equally divided between all of them with the exception of Cedric Harwicke who gets equal billing with the others for what amounts to no more than two minutes screen time in a Prologue. Having clearly drawn the short straw Don Ameche gets to play the heavy - in this case the Naval Commander/martinet who in playing it by the book comes into conflict (natch) with Dana Andrews. Andrews would be on the losing end again about six years later when he crossed swords with Richard Widmark in The Frogmen. The acting is more or less up to snuff and we get early glimpses of B.S. Pulley and Richard Jaeckel, apart from that it's run-of-the-mill.

"The True Story of Carrier X". Not. A decent flick, but given that it was made in 1944, there are still some propaganda/intelligence considerations.It's interesting that we pick apart current movies (like Spiderman), yet leave these old films alone - when there are much more egregious errors to it. Pilots in TBFs taking off, when the planes that are launched are SBDs. Place #31 takes off, but it's plane #27 which crashes. The winning planes of Midway are torpedo planes instead of dive bombers.Despite these sort of issues, it does appear to capture the spirit of the carrier air groups of the war. Well worth seeing.My interest was to determine which carrier in fact was used for the film. Definitely an Essex class - the first of which was launched in '42. So it wasn't really at Midway. Looks like the USS Hornet CV-12 - which would be cute, the orignal USS Hornet (CV-8) was at Midway. But the hull number is not visible in the film.