Sublime decisión

"Command Decision" is a wonderful film filled with several great performances. It's Gable's movie, but he's very capably supported by Walter Pigeon, Brian Donlevy and John Hodiak, who nearly equals his "Lifeboat" performance.

Pigeon is especially good in the roll of a senior commander who is more concerned with the political considerations of the war effort than the tactical and strategic goals. (Not without reason - The film correctly details the perilous and tenuous position that the 8th Air Force found itself in during the worst combat period of 1943.)

One of the best scenes in the film is a very long speech given by Pigeon, wherein he explains his reasons for fighting the good fight to keep American air power strong. The scene is a good 6 or 7 minutes long, one camera shot, entirely done without cuts. It must have been rehearsed extensively as it requires about 10 actors to interact with Pigeon at several times, all the while he is moving about the room. Seamless, and very well done! This remarkable scene is followed up with one almost as long, given by Gable.

The drama is occasionally broken up with comic moments provided by Van Johnson, as a savvy sergeant, and Clinton Sunberg as a fastidious aide to Pigeon's General Kane.

If you like to watch actors banging away with words instead of guns, this is the war movie for you.

Command Decision was adapted from a Broadway play that ran for 409 performances the previous year. Tony Awards were won by Paul Kelly who played General K.C. Dennis and James Whitmore for Tech Sergeant Emanuel Evans. The play shows the process of making military decisions when you have to factor in the politicians who control the purse strings. It's a necessary evil in a society that values civilian control of the military.

Both during and after World War II there was a debate among the British and American air commanders over the value of daylight versus nighttime bombing attacks. The British did night raids over Germany, responding in kind to what the Luftwaffe had done to them. Fly over at high altitudes and just drop the bombs. It did make for fewer casualties among the RAF pilots of their Lancaster bombers.

The Americans opted for daylight raids at a lower altitude trying to hit certain strategic objectives. In Command Decision it involves three factories that intelligence has learned are manufacturing new jet aircraft. If the Nazis had ever developed the far advanced jets against the Allied propeller aircraft in any number, the course of the war over Europe might have changed. Just like the V-2 rockets were developed too late to help the Axis cause.

Command Decision has Clark Gable leading a distinguished cast as the general who has to make the decision about whether to bomb or not, to go into Germany's heartland without fighter escort. Unfortunately his purely military outlook is not shared by his immediate superior Walter Pidgeon who has to factor in the politicians in Congress who read the dispatches by correspondents like Charles Bickford here about the appalling losses in American life.

In many ways Pidgeon has the most difficult part in the film. He has to take in the voices of objection raised by the visiting Congressional delegation led by Edward Arnold. Pidgeon is a politician, but purely by necessity. We admire Gable's stand on principle, but the audience also respects Pidgeon and sympathizes with him.

On Broadway Command Decision takes place in the headquarters and to make it better for the screen, playwright William Wister Haines wrote an additional scene that Paul Kelly did not do on Broadway. Clark Gable on a radio microphone tries to talk down a bombardier who is piloting a plane where the pilot and co-pilot are wounded and killed. It's a harrowing scene and one of the best Clark Gable ever did. Gable must have drawn from his World War II experience, he was a tailgunner in our Army Air Corps and flew many a B-17 mission over Germany.

Rounding out a distinguished group of MGM contractees are Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Marshall Thompson, Cameron Mitchell, Warner Anderson, Ray Collins, John McIntire and John Hodiak. They all cast well as Army Air Force personnel. Johnson plays the part that James Whitmore originated on stage and provides what little humor there is in this film.

The main criticism of Command Decision has always been that it is too stagey. But I found it an absorbing account of the decision making process in a military command.

(There May Be Spoilers) Launching "Operation Stich" a week ahead of time, due to the favorable weather conditions over Germany, Brig. Gen. K.C Dennis', Clark Gable, B-17 Bombers suffer the loss of 48 aircraft on the first day's mission.

Going some 600 miles into Germany, without fighter escort, in a triangular bombardment of the key German industrial cities of Posenleben Schweinhafen and Fendelhorst. Gen. Dennis is determined to take them out Before the weather worsens and doesn't care how many planes and crews it costs him to do it.

The next days bombing of Schweinhafen cost another 24 B-17's. Due to German ingenuity in camouflaging the factories there the USAAF bombed the wrong city making it necessary to go on a bomb run the next day on the real Schweinhafen. By now the USAAF crews are at the point of refusing to go on their missions over Germany feeling that Gen.Dennis is out of his mind by sending then to certain death.

Gen. Dennis' superior and friend Maj. Gen. Kane, Walter Pigeon, is very upset with his actions and is about to relive him of his duties as combat-wing commander. Since Gen. Dennis launched his assault on Germany he lost some 70 bombers in two days compared to the loss of under 20 bombers lost by the RAF during the same period.

In a private meeting with Gen. Kane and other USAAF top personnel Gen. Dennis makes his case for the actions that he's taken even if it coast him his command of the B-17 combat-wing. The Germans are developing this revolutionary jet-fighter, the Lantze-Wolf. The Nazi Super-Plane is so superior to anything that the allies have that if it's manufactured in mass and put in the air the German Luftwaffe would drive the USAAF and RAF from the skies of Europe. It would make it impossible for a cross channel invasion of Europe the next year, 1944, and cost the allies the war.

Unable to open a second front in Western Europe and with the Luftwaffe having total air supremacy will force the allies, the USA UK and USSR, to agree to an armistice and peace treaty with the Germans on Hitler's terms. The bombing of those cities deep in Germany by Gen. Dennis' bombers will destroy the Germans ability to mass-produce the Lantez-Wolf. Thus save in the future countless American and Allied soldiers lives at the cost of the heavy, but necessary, losses in B-17 and their crews now.

This causes Gen. Kane to look the other way, knowing how right Gen. Dennis is, by allowing him to send his bombers out the next day and finally knock out the German industrial city of Schweinhafen. The bombing raid cost the life of Gen. Dennis best friend Col. Martin,John Hodiak. It's also in Schweinhafen where the jet-fighter is being assembled and in the end because of the heavy losses in that bombing raid Gen. Kane is forced, reluctantly, to relive Gen. Dennis of his command. US politicians like Congressman Arthur Malcolm, Edward Arnold, afraid of how the people back home feel about the staggering losses in the skies over Germany and Gen. Dennis' actions being responsible for them it's only a matter of time for him to be dismissed as a USAAF combat-wing commander.

The general took his dismissal with the same courage as his men took the murderous anti-aircraft fire and attacks of German fighters on the missions that he sent them on. Being replaced by his friend and fellow classmate at West Point Let. Gen. Clifton Garnet,Brian Donlevy.

Gen. Garnet also goes against the top brass, the next day, in ordering the bombing of Fendelhorst in central Germany to take out the last place where the deadly Lantze-Wolf are being made. With that, facing the same fate that Gen. Dennis just went through, ended up winning the war for the allies at the possible cost of his military career.

The truth is that like in the movie "Command Dicision" the Germans did develop a jet-fighter late in the war that if it was mass-produced and sent up against the allied air forces a year earlier would have won the Second World War for Germany. The German Masserschmitt Me-262 jet fighter could reach speeds of 540 to 580 MPH that was some 100 to 150 MPH faster then the swiftest USAAF and RAF fighters. In combat it scored as much as 700 combat kills over allied planes during 1944-1945. In their last major air to air engagement over Berlin in March 1945 some dozen Me-262's downed 25 B-17 and 5 fighter escorts to the loss of only two of their own.

Under 300 of the Me-262 jets put into combat and with, for the most part, them being flown by unexperienced pilots and with a shortage of jet fuel to keep the planes airborne for any long period of time. It turned out that the decision of USAAF generals like K.C Dennis to bomb the factories where the Me-262 were being made, despite the heavy allied air losses, that in the end won the war for the Allies in Europe.

This is an under-appreciated gem of a move.

To start with, the core story sounds utterly fantastic, but it is partly true. There was never a "Lance-Wulf 190", but there really was a Messerschmidt Me-262 in World War 2. The Me-262 wasn't quite the wonder-plane which the mythical Lance-Wulf was, but it was a swept-wing jet with a top speed of 540 mph, a blinding speed for the time. And, as fighter pilots say, "speed is life".

American bombing in August, 1943 did delay the introduction of the real Me-262. (The pre-production aircraft were wrecked on an assembly line, forcing a delay of several months.) The irony is that the German jet fighter program was really stymied by Hitler's aversion to defensive weapons and the German feeling that the war could be won with existing fighter types.

There is, however, a "message" in this film which fully applies to civilian life. You know that everything is okay just now, but this will soon come to an end. Given those facts, are you willing to take some massive losses now and solve the problem? Or do you just wait for the situation to become visible to everyone before you act?

I don't know how many times I've seen people--even bright ones--opt for the "wait and see" course of action. It never works.

Just as Betty Davis's 1938 film "Jezebel" was overshadowed by "Gone With The Wind", this film was overshadowed by "Twelve O'Clock High".

There must be at least one whole generation of viewers who don't even know this film exists! Yet it remains one of the very best WWII films ever made. I first saw as a child, when it was quite new, and have seen it several times since. It has never lost its hold and that, I suppose, principally because of Clark Gable's superb performance (although the other parts are all very strongly done). It really must be one of his finest screen roles and that alone, one might think, would ensure that it is never long absent from television screens. Sadly it has been shown in Britain but once that I know of, and is not available here on a PAL-system video, although "Twelve O'Clock High" is available and often screened. In many ways the two films complement each other, each not wholly to be appreciated without seeing the other. "Twelve O'Clock High" has an almost exclusively military focus while "Command Decision" brings in the effect of political factors on military decisions. The latter film, however, has an edge: Gable on top form and that was always something very special.