The Dawn Patrol (1938)

How sad is this?

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

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

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There's a scene in the movie that made me stop and think - it's when Major Brand (Basil Rathbone) receives congratulations from his high command for his flyers taking out the German drone. For a length of time, Rathbone, Errol Flynn, David Niven and Donald Crisp are all on screen together at the same time. All great actors with tons of great work between them and here, captured for a moment in time, they're in the company of one another. A rare moment and a veritable treat for cinema fans.For all it's heroics, this World War I film is positioned as much an anti-war film as any modern day epic like "The Deer Hunter" or "Platoon". It's got new recruits reporting to battle with as little as nine hours of flight time, and probably as much life remaining once they take to the skies on their first mission. Watching a film almost eighty years old does nothing to assure us that fighting men of an earlier era were better prepared or equipped than those of today. The same gripes still apply.I was intrigued by some of the ideas presented here and it made me wonder if events depicted in the story could have actually happened. Like German Ace Von Richter taunting the Brits by dropping a pair of boots from his plane with the message 'safer on the ground'. Or how about Scotty (Niven) making the save for Courtney (Flynn) after his plane went down on the strafing run? Perhaps even more unbelievable was Courtney and the pilot Von Mueller (Carl Esmond) toasting each other after the German's plane was shot down and he was captured. All rather incongruous elements in a war picture to be sure.The one thing you probably won't be prepared for though are the planes themselves. One shudders to think that men went to war in rickety bi-planes like the ones in the picture and men actually lived to tell about it. No high tech wizardry or laser guided missiles here, just the sheer guts and stamina required to defeat an enemy and make it back home safely and in one piece. It makes you wonder how they did it.

In France for service in the Great War (aka World War I), handsome pilot Errol Flynn (as Dick Courtney) and pal David Niven (as Doug "Scotty" Scott) clash with commander Basil Rathbone (as Drake Brand) over his decisions to send young fliers out on suicide missions in rickety planes. But, with the Germans active nearby, Mr. Rathbone has limited options. Taking the lead, Mr. Flynn decides to go over Rathbone's head, completing a foolish mission with Mr. Niven co-piloting. Rathbone threatens to have him court-martialed, but a worse fate awaits Flynn – he is quickly promoted to commander of "The Dawn Patrol". Now in charge, Flynn must order young fliers out on suicide missions in rickety planes...This is close re-make of the Warner Bros. own "The Dawn Patrol" (1930), with its most exciting aerial footage simply flown in (figuratively) from the previous film. While a more crude production, the earlier film is superior. The 1930 version captures the story's sense of war dread far better. In the original, a sense of doom permeates everything, even when the characters are having a good time. Original stars Richard Barthelmess (as Courtney) and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (as Scott) acted like characters trying to drown the horror of war by carousing in drink. They seemed tortured. Here, at times, Flynn and Niven look more like actors having fun with their roles. An exception, Rathbone keeps a serious foundation.****** The Dawn Patrol (12/23/38) Edmund Goulding ~ Errol Flynn, David Niven, Basil Rathbone, Donald Crisp

Great WW1 flying drama. A remake of Howard Hawks' "The Dawn Patrol" (1930) (sometimes known as "Flight Commander"). Not sure why it needed to be remade - it was great as it was.This version doesn't add anything. Plot is almost to-the-letter identical to the original. Flying sequences and cinematography here are about as good, even though this movie was made 8 years later.Not that there's anything wrong with this movie. Still a very gritty and accurate look at life, and death, in a Royal Flying Corps (RFC) fighter squadron. Details fairly well the burden of command, of sending pilots to almost certain death.One area where this version trumps the original is in the performances. The original's performances weren't bad, but weren't great either. Here the performances are superb, especially from Errol Flynn, David Niven and Basil Rathbone.As said, not sure why this was (re)made, but a great movie nevertheless.

Warner Brothers more than most of the other major studios had a habit of simply recycling the old plots of their films and repackaging them. A good example would be the boxing film Kid Galahad remade a few years later as The Wagons Roll at Night with the setting now changed to a circus. But in this case we didn't get a remake of The Dawn Patrol, we got practically a carbon copy.I finally saw the original The Dawn Patrol that was made in 1930 by Howard Hawks and found that this film was practically a word for word remake of the Hawks classic. Of course it was no surprise to learn that all the aviation sequences were just lifted bodily from the first film, but probably more than that was done. Several long-shots looked exactly the same.In a way this might have worked out because director Edmund Goulding who was not known for action films could concentrate on the actors and he got very good performances out of Errol Flynn, David Niven, and Basil Rathbone who step into the parts that Richard Barthelmess, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and Neil Hamilton did the first time around.Still after seeing first one version, than the other, one might be complaining of double vision at that.