El escuadrón de la muerte

Terrific war film starring Richard Barthelmess as a veteran British pilot in France whose job is to make raids behind enemy lines in what are basically suicide runs. He complains to his commander (Neil Hamilton) about the green kids he gets, but of course war is hell and there's nothing anyone can do. It seems like every day they send out 5 or 6 planes and 2 or 3 come back. The guys drink heavily to hide their anguish. Barthelmess and Hamilton fight constantly until Hamilton is promoted and Barthelmess gets his desk job.

Now it's his job to send out the fliers. His best friend (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) becomes the squad leader as the green kids keep showing up for duty. Then Fairbanks' kid brother arrives. What follows breaks up the friendship between Barthelmess and Fairbanks, but the war drones on.

Excellent cinematography of aerial fights and bombing raids. The ending is simply superb, one full of heroism and irony.

Barthelmess and Fairbanks are excellent, and Hamilton is also good. Supporting cast includes Frank McHugh, William Janney, James Finlayson, Clyde Cook, and Gardner James.

This is what film-making is all about! The Vitaphone audio recording process challenges itself almost continuously in this early talkie. You aurally count the number of planes coming in (off-camera) while watching the reaction of the principals inside the office. You even get the correct fidelity of the wind-up gramophone as characters talk over it. Meanwhile, you watch aerial dogfights that switch seamlessly from soundstage re-creations to actual footage made by a camera mounted at the front of an aeroplane, without any jarring sense of displacement. The melodrama remains palpable with very little over-acting. I'm taking one point off for that occasional over-acting, and for the really dumb use of Southern California semi-desert topography in which the planes take off and land. It wouldn't have been that hard to find a location with a few more trees and more grass. Oh, well. The movie still must have knocked the original audiences' socks off.

That's normally the answer to all orders given to the fliers in the day room of "Flight Commander". It signifies neither assent or disagreement, just obedience to official orders. You have to watch the face or listen to the tone to decide whether the recipient is enthused, annoyed or resigned. Such is life on the western front of an RAF outpost during WW1 - and where life is a fragile commodity.

Also known as "The Dawn Patrol", it was remade in 1938. That's the one I knew from Million Dollar Movie on Ch. 9 in NYC, and it would play for a whole week. I loved it and watched it as often as I could. I thought no one could beat Errol Flynn and David Niven in the two lead roles, until I saw the original, "Flight Commander" which starred Richard Barthelmess, Neil Hamilton and Douglas Fairbanks,Jr. (Basil Rathbone played the Neil Hamilton role as Commander of the doomed fliers in the '38 version). The acting was far superior in the earlier version, but the later one had better production values. It seems some of the same great aerial footage was used in both films.

If I had to pick one, I like this (1930) version better as it was emotionally more satisfying; it had more 'heart'. And Richard Barthelmess was an excellent actor who for some reason couldn't last in talking pictures. I also thought this may have been Fairbanks' best acting job. Well, that's my take on the two films, and that's the best part of going to the movies - it's often subjective, and there's no accounting for taste.

Although William Wellman is the Hollywood director most associated with air films, not counting of course the self indulgent Howard Hughes, Howard Hawks with The Dawn Patrol and with Air Circus and Only Angels Have Wings can certainly hold is own against the formidable Mr. Wellman on his own turf.

This may have been Howard Hawks's first sound feature and he debuted magnificently with a story about a group of fliers from the United Kingdom's Royal Flying Corps of World War I. John Monk Saunders wrote the original story for the screen that netted The Dawn Patrol an Academy Award for that category.

The story centers on three men. Group commander Neil Hamilton who has to send his men up against some of Germany's best fliers and two of his senior pilots, Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Hamilton is a troubled man indeed, having to send barely trained kid pilots and he hears about it from Barthelmess and Fairbanks.

One fine day, oddly enough to do a daring assault that Barthelmess and Fairbanks pull off, Hamilton gets a promotion up to the staff headquarters. In a curious bit of poetic vengeance he names Barthelmess his replacement.

Of course when Barthelmess now is seeing the war from Hamilton's point of view, he starts to behave differently. What he does and the choices he makes are the basis for the rest of this story about some of the United Kingdom's most gallant generation lost in the first terrible total war of the last century.

As Fairbanks and Barthelmess criticize Hamilton in what he does, I do wonder about when they were the fresh recruits. They became the veterans more than likely by sheer chance that they did survive. Yet that never plays a part in their thinking.

The aerial combat sequences are excellently staged, Howard Hughes and William Wellman could hardly have done better. They were so good that they got used again in the 1938 remake of this film.

The Dawn Patrol also marked the film debut of Frank McHugh who graced Warner Brothers films for the next 20 years. I've said in many comments and on their respective pages that it could almost not be a Warner Brothers film without either Frank McHugh or Alan Hale or both in a given feature, they appeared so often. The brothers Warner, got their work out of those two.

The 1938 remake with Errol Flynn, David Niven, and Basil Rathbone is the one most are familiar with. Still this one is the real deal.

This is an early talkie starring Richard Barthelmess as Dick Courtney and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Doug Scott, a couple of World War I aces and the best of friends, at least at the beginning of the film. Neil Hamilton (police commissioner Gordon in the 60's Batman TV series) is Major Brand, in charge of handing out commands and assignments among his group of fliers. One day Courtney and Scott pull off a daring air raid that they have been ordered not to do by Brand. When they return, their success causes Brand to be promoted just as he is about to punish Courtney, and now Barthelmess' Dick Courtney is named as replacement and the new commander of the unit.

Now instead of risking death himself, Courtney is the one ordering others into harm's way, and it is cracking him up as he turns more and more to drink. However, he still has Scott's friendship until a new recruit arrives and is ordered into a fatal battle. Now it is Scott who not only has no use for Courtney, but no use for life itself, and it is up to Courtney to make sure that Scott doesn't throw his life away.

This film, like many early talkies, is long on talk but short on the kind of aerial action you'd probably expect in a film about World War I fliers. Only towards the last third of the film do you see much in the way of dogfights. The focus is mainly on the fliers themselves and the futility of war. Barthelmess gives a great and poignant performance as Dick Courtney, and he lasted longer in talking pictures than most silent film actors due to his great skill. Also remember that most of the films made about World War I during this time were essentially anti-war films. By the beginning of the depression, WWI seemed a wasted effort in both money and manpower, and these early talking picture war films reflected that attitude.

The version of this film starring Errol Flynn is what most people remember. It's too bad this version didn't at least rate as an extra feature on that DVD. It makes for an interesting comparison.