DAWN PATROL

New Zealand Listener, Volume 1, Issue 7, 11 August 1939, Page 33

DAWN PATROL

(Warners)

That anything worth doing is worth doing more than once is one of the few principles to which Hollywood rigidly adheres. Another is that any story about the British should be more British than Big Ben. Both principles are applied in "Dawn Patrol," which was first made in 1930 with Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks, junr. as the stars. For its second take-off in 1939, "Dawn Patrol" has Basil Rathbone as the suffering flight commander, who has to send his men to almost certain death in "flying coffins," and Errol Flynn as the captain, who sardonically grins and bears it until he is promoted to flight-comman-der in Rathbone’s place and learns that staying on the ground and giving orders can be the harder task. According to popular legend and "Time" magazine, the film was rushed ta completion during the Munich crisis because several of the British-born actors were reserve pilots who momentarily expected to be called to the colours. But this did not mean any skimping of production. There was, in any case, little need for it, since most of the spectacular scenes of air warfare, and particularly the destruction of a German air base and a German munitions dump, were lifted in toto from the earlier version. But present-day Hollywood, even if it had tried, could hardly have improved on the ex-

citing realism of these scenes of 1930 vintage. For those who want it there is an anti-war moral; for those who don’t there are tight-lipped pilots saying "Right!" when they obviously mean "Wrong!" and self. consciously muttering about doing their duty and dying like men. For those who seek tense drama and emotional climaxes there are plenty. For misogynists there is the assurance that there is not a woman in the cast. And for those who are interested in acting, as acting, there is the experience of seeing Flynn, the top-rank star, being out-classed by the more experienced Rathbone, and both being put well in the shade by David Niven’s beautifully restrained performance as the hero’s happy-go-lucky friend. Big thrill for the class-conscious: the appearance of Michael Brooke, Earl of Warwick, as one of the pilots.