Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Another one of our aircraft is missing, somewhere north of the 49th parallel

Errol Flynn was TCM's star of the Month earlier this year, which gave me the chance to record a couple of movies that I hadn't blogged about before. Among those movies is Desperate Journey. Recently I watched it, so now you get a post on it.

A multinational crew is given the task of bombing an important railway junction in what, before the war, was the very eastern part of Germany near the border with Poland. Among them are Brits Lt. Forbes (Errol Flynn) and Sgt. Hollis (Ronald Sinclair), and American Johnny Hammond (Ronald Reagan). Two other members of the crew are presumably American, Sgt. Edwards (Alan Hale Sr.) and Officer Forrest (Arthur Kennedy). (From doing a bit of reading, it sounds like the script was written before the US entered World War II, so the Americans were presumably intended to be the sort of volunteer like the ones who went to Europe in 1916 to fly in World War I.)

The bomber goes on its run, but the weather is bad and the cloud ceiling is low, so to complete the mission, they have to fly low enough that it gives the Germans a good shot at knocking the plane out of the sky, which they summarily do, or else we wouldn't have a movie. All five of the men survive, although Hollis is substantially injured, which isn't surprising since he's the one played by the least-known of the actors, at least by Hollywood standards. The others don't want to leave Hollis behind to die, or worse, to get picked up by the Nazis and tortured for information. In any case, the result is that the Nazis pick them up as a group, and it's up to Maj. Baumeister (Raymond Massey) to interrogate them.

The major is a bit of an idiot in that he doesn't have anybody aruond him for the interrogations. This allows Lt. Forbes to get in a fight with him and win it, allowing the men the time to search the office and then escape. Of course, they now have to figure out how to get the hell out of Nazi Germany, even though they don't really know anybody and have the entire might of the Nazi state gunning for them.

Amazingly, however, they're able to get first on a railcar heading for Berlin with a lot of wounded German soldiers. And once in Berlin, they actually meet Käthe Brahms (Nancy Coleman), who is part of the relatively passive resistance. She works for a doctor who also opposes the Nazis, and that gives the flyboys another chance to escape when the Nazis come calling. Käthe has parents in Münster, which is rather further west, and would allow them to get closer to England. Somehow they make it to Münster, and as part of the Nazis catching up to them in Münster, they steal Maj. Baumeister's car, which allows them to get to the Netherlands. That was of course occupied by the Nazis at the time, but at least theoretically had a lot more people who hated the Nazis than Germany proper did. Not that we meet many of these people. Instead, the plot deals with the Germans having repaired a downed British bomber which they're hoping to fix and then use on a bombing raid since the RAF wo't notice until too late that it's not the Brits flying this plane.

While watching Desperate Journey, it was hard to escape the similarities to a couple of British movies, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing and 49th Parallel. Unfortunately, I think both of those movies are superior because they go for intelligence, while Desperate Journey goes for entertainment and the sort of dehumanizing the enemy propaganda. The coincidences in Desperate Journey also seem more far-fetched than the other movies. Still, it does entertain well enough, and fans of old Hollywood World War II movies will certainly enjoy it.

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