CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 7, Issue 179, 27 November 1942, Page 13

CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS

(Warner Bros.)

[_TKE modern Gaul was until ‘a few days ago, Captains of the Clouds is divided into. two parts -two very unequal portions. unequal in

dramatic value, in ‘acting, in dialogue, in genuine (as distinct: from Hollywooden), human interest, in photography, and in direction. Imagine a first-class, up-to-the-minute American documentary about Canada’s part in the Empire Air Training Scheme preceded by a backwoods girl-grabs-visitor drammer (circa The Trail of the Lonesome Pine), all done up in hackneycoloured, chocolate box photography,

and you have a rough idea of what this latest Cagney production is like. If our little man had come in about half-time, he’d have been tempted to stand on his’ seat to applaud. As it is, the fact that he can still applaud vigorously may be taken as indicating that the better half was, to coin a phrase, so much better. The fact that Captains pf the Clouds is in technicolour will probably make the first half more endurable for most filmgoers, but it is so hackneyed in every way that I can dismiss it by saying that James Cagney, Dennis Morgan, . Alan Hale, George Tobias, and Reginald Gardiner are Canadian bush-pilots, each running his own rackety little freight*plane, and after some disagreement on business and personal (Brenda Marshall), tters, they find themselves all together again in the R.C.A.F. Into this new environment (by a series of accidents which almost: dislocate the Long Arm of Coincidence), are imported the dregs of the backwoods melodrama, on the erroneous assumption. that the ordinary day-to-day activities of the Air Training -Scheme. and the Atlantic bomber ferry, service need something to pep them up. Of course, they don’t, and with the inevitable exception of Mr. Cagney, the male stars are forced by their new environment to behave like ordinary, matter-of-fact humans. . I was somewhat startled to find that Warner, Bros. had managed to ving in Air Marshal Billy Bishop, V.C. as an extra-he actually takes part in the acting, along. with hundreds of traineesbut the general impression with which one is left when the lights go up is that the’ Air Training Scheme is (at the | moment) ae real and more important © than Hollywood — Stars,’ directors, box-offices, and all.