Air Force (1943)

(On Cable TV, March 2019) Hollywood churned out many propaganda movies during WW2, but they weren’t all of the same quality. Fortunately, Howard Hawks’ Air Force is among the better ones. Focusing on the camaraderie of a bomber crew on the Pacific front, it’s both representative of the inspiring didactic nature of the WW2 propaganda films, and an opportunity for Hawks to indulge in his usual themes and motifs. (Well, absent the presence of strong female characters.)  As the story moves from the US West Coast to Pearl Harbor and then on to the Philippines, the film remains more entertaining than you would expect from its rushed production schedule. Great miniature special effects work and exceptional editing help in patching a film conceived and executed at breakneck speed in the opening months of the war—it’s no surprise that the dramatic scenes feel out of sync with the action, because more care could be lavished on them than the more practical aspects of the production. Reading about the film’s production (even with official help from the US Air Force), it’s nearly a miracle that the film exists at all, let alone have it reach an acceptable level of watchability. The propagandist nature of the film is more obvious in the blunt-force prologue and epilogue, and toward the end of the film during which the bomber crew not only pulls off an amazing repair job before flying to safety, but also spots a Japanese fleet and spearhead an attack on it; not only shoots down a Japanese fighter plane, but has the pilot burn alive before crashing into an enemy ship and severely damaging it. Whew. Still, even with those not-so-subtle patriotic intentions, Hawks manages to portray a small group of men pulling together through the obstacles in their way—you can fly the flag as high as you want, there’s really no substitute in raising morale than having likable characters coming together in the face of deadly peril.