Strategic Air Command (1955)

Very disappointed :(

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Anthony Mann and James Stewart paired up for numerous features in the 1950s, their best work being that in the western genre. STRATEGIC AIR COMMAND is something different, a look at the workings of a bomber command crew during the Cold War. Stewart gives an effortlessly likeable performance as the family man battling with duty at home and at work, while the all-colour production certainly looks nice and aeroplane fans will be delighted by the technology of the era. It's certainly watchable enough for fans of the actor and movies of the era. However, it's all a little too worthy, a little too dull. The drama that evolves is rather predictable in nature and all of the bits with June Allyson merely drag. You can't help but think a WW2-themed movie would have been more satisfying.

With a rentals gross of $6 million, the film ranks in 11th position as one of the most popular movies in the domestic market for 1955. Thanks to Stewart's popularity, the movie also did well at the British box-office , but in Australia it proved a dud. Booked as the Christmas attraction at Sydney's most prestigious Prince Edward, it was yanked after only three weeks of what was anticipated to be an eight or ten-week season. It was replaced by a stop-gap "Lucy Gallant" for three weeks before "To Catch a Thief" started its mightily successful run in early February.Stewart has a tailored part. He was himself a pilot during WW2 and his public also identified him with baseball, thanks to "The Stratton Story". Alas, despite flattering photography, the ageing star is obviously too old for the role. He doesn't engage our sympathy because no Air Force in its right senses would call on such an old crock to man its new super-planes. Stewart's magic just doesn't work here. He seems so out of place, we don't even expect him to break out into a Glenn Miller number. He looks plain miscast. When he's called upon to do more than just recite his lines, he mugs atrociously. Nearing the end of his long partnership with Anthony Mann, it seems that Stewart had simply tired of taking direction.The writing is superficial and dull. On the ground especially, the movie's a super dud, as boring in 2017 as it was when first released. Miss Allyson clogs up the works, Lovejoy fulminates about the patriotic necessity of SAC, Bennett is wasted in a tiny role. A couple of brief action sequences and some spectacular aerial shots of the planes in flight, are all that save a very dismal movie experience.

On the evening of July 1st 1952 a couple of chaps and I were kicking a ball about on the beach at Minehead, West Somerset, England when we heard this rising sound of aircraft, then overhead at quite a low level a number of B36's flew over from East to West. Our accounts of the number varied from fourteen to eighteen as they were spread right out. But it was an awesome sight that I have never forgotten. From that day anything to do with the Peacemaker I've followed with great interest. The sequences on the ground and in the air in this film are marvellous. I'm seventy-eight now but the B-36 was and always will be an all-time great to me.

I must admit I found it very difficult to rate this movie. On the surface it is a solid piece of entertain about a man choosing his country/duty over his successful career.Jimmy Stewart is excellent as always and June Allyson plays his loving, dutiful wife for a 3rd time.And while the special effects may not exactly be modern state-of-the-art, the flying scenes are dramatic and exhilarating.No, the problem is SAC's justification for its existence, as personified by Gen. Hawks (Frank Lovejoy). Post Stangelove, Vietnam, Nixon, Afghanistan and Iraq, the unquestioning call to patriotism, backed by stirring music, rings completely hollow, if not downright uncomfortable 50 years later.One can only wonder how it may be viewed in 2050.