Un homme de fer

I first saw TOH about 30 years ago, and, yes, it was at a management training course. Video wasn't common then; so it was projected onto a screen, I remember, which was a bonus. I wasn't sure about management principles, but it went straight onto my ten greatest films list, where it remains. A few reasons why I think it's a great war film.

Following the intro with Dean Jagger, the action gets off to a good start with the B17 crash landing, a man staggering out to vomit, a reference to a wounded man's brain being visible and an account of Bishop's bravery. This is strong stuff for 1949.

It avoids a lot of war film clichés. There's no love interest (there's even a nod to the fact that the men weren't always faithful to their loved ones back home). There's no attempt to create a group of men who represent the breadth of society back home. You know the sort of thing - the New York cabbie, the young farm boy, the Texan, the idealistic schoolteacher, the journalist, the architect who's now bombing things that he once built. And it's about failure, it's about men destroying their bodies and their minds for something they don't understand. It reminds me of the colour-sergeant's reply to a soldier in Zulu, who asks 'Why us?'. 'Because we're 'ere, lad. Just us. Nobody else.' If I wanted to sound pretentious, I'd use the word 'existential'.

It's about leadership and is similar to Nortwest Passage. Both Spencer Tracy in that film and Peck in this are aware that they are putting on an act. One of the great scenes is Peck arriving at the base. He's sitting in the front of the car. They stop and Peck offers his driver, whom he calls 'Ernie', a smoke. He thinks for a while, then grinds out his cigarette, says, 'Right, sergeant.' His driver snaps open the rear door and Peck becomes the general. Northwest Passage again - Tracy says 'I'm not a man now, I'm an officer responsible for men. If you meet me when I'm just a man, you might have to use a little charity.' Other nice touches: the way the fur-lined RAF boots become the symbol of leadership. The way the real-life footage is dovetailed into the main action, a tribute to the war-time cameramen as much as the editor. Notice how they filmed detail like empty shells falling to the aircraft floor.

So how could a film about military leadership help a local government manager, of all people. I couldn't bust people or demote them easily, rearrange their duties with a stroke of the pen. I would have loved to set up a leper colony, but the union wouldn't let me. But Peck's stressing of the need for pride in one's group is something that can be transferred to any walk of life.

OK I'll admit up front - I am biased. My Dad was a B-17 side gunner. He volunteered before the war started to be a pilot. But he was from the rural South and could shoot the eyes out of a horsefly and not hit the horse. So they made him a gunner. He was in the early wave of crews, when they had something like a 2 percent chance of making 25 missions. He made 13. He had a high opinion of this film. That is apparently how most 8th Air Force veterans feel.

I have to subtract 1 star for the overindulgence in team spirit. Otherwise this is a great film, because it has an idea, almost as if it's a training film for officers. The action is almost contrived in order to make the points about leadership. And yet, that is exactly what makes it so compelling. This is a man's job, not a boy's. The job of the brigadier is the hardest in the service. There is no time off. You are close enough to the front to be directly involved, so that you feel the personal weight of your command decisions.

The casting here is just fantastic. These are men! It is refreshing to see men of honor doing their duty, not out of some macho bravado, but because someone has to do a nasty, hard job. Macho is for boys. Duty is for men. I particularly liked Dean Jagger. He and Peck played extremely well together. It is great to watch them interact.

The flying sequences are also remarkable. I got to crawl around in a B-17 once. I'm the same size as my Dad, and it was a tight fit. With 10 guys in there, it would be some crowd. You get that feeling from the film. And then there's the crowd of the formation. They got that right as well. These scenes have lost nothing and are still gripping, 70 years later. The expert technical advice the film makers received really shows up.

I think my favorite character is Sergeant/Private McIlhinny. I sort of see my Dad in him. There are a lot of memorable characters in this film. I can't recommend it enough, biased or not!

Of all the movies to come out of Hollywood covering world war two, I place this one, which I first saw in 1950, in the top-draw category. From the very start when the credits start rolling, the opening music seemed to fit perfectly; instead of the era-splitting noise they have hit us with in recent years. The old wartime, "Bless 'em All" and, "Don't sit under the apple tree", heard in the background, as Dean Jagger, now a civilian, slowly takes a nostalgic walk out onto the weed-covered, oil-stained runway to remember gallant times of the 918th Bomb Group, now past.

Gregory Peck as Brigadier General Frank Savage did great credit to this role, and deserved an Oscar. From the moment he enters the base and tears into the guard at the gate for casually waving him through, you know he's going to be a S.O.B. Dean Jagger as Major Stovall, the lawyer in uniform now Ground Executive Officer knows how to handle the paperwork after the first sobering face to face encounter with with Savage. That Jagger won the Oscar as best supporting actor, was well deserved indeed. Gary Merrill as Colonel Keith Davenport, the too popular Group CO, very good. Hugh Marlowe as Lt Colonel Ben Gately, who flew too many missions from behind a desk, placed on the rack by Savage with the other bomb group deadbeats and foul ups, handles his role well. Then their's Millard Mitchell as Major General Pritchard, displaying a commanding presence, and Paul Stewart as Doc Kaiser, also well portrayed.

There are no false heroics in this movie. No blood and guts all over the silver screen. And no routine world war two, hard boiled, go-get-'em dialogue to spoil it. The authors, Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay. wrote an excellent screenplay. They did the film a favour, they deleted General Savage's love interest that appeared in their fine novel. I don't think it would have added anything to the movie at all. Maybe what surprised a lot of moviegoers who had not read the book before seeing the movie, was Savage's mental breakdown; freezing suddenly at the hatch as he attempted to heave himself aboard the B-17. It was so unexpected of him after showing such ice-cold nerves

What rounded out this impressive movie was the insertion of the air combat footage shot over Europe during the actual daylight operations. This documentary footage crowned a very fine achievement. One of Henry King's best; a professional effort indeed. The thread of sincerity in this war movie runs deep.

The reason I found the movie so engrossing was, as a teenager, on the sidelines of the war, I saw more than one B-17 stagger home and belly in on a wing and a prayer. This movie was loaded with integrity from the beginning to the end credits. I'm sure the gallant gentlemen who flew with the Eighth Air Force over enemy-occupied Europe would be of the same opinion. It is a kind of monument to those warriors.

No gungho up and at 'em men. No false heroics. A great war film, but also an anti-war film of great intensity. Just ordinary men (and boys) doing the job they knew they had got to do. Greg Peck magnificent as the general forced to stiffen the morale of his bomber group, and who he himself eventually cracks under the strain. Dean Jagger outstanding and thoroughly deserving his oscar as best supporting actor. A truly great film, 10 out of 10 in my book. There are still disused airfields like that shown at the beginning only a few miles from where I live (although they were RAF bases). In 1943-45 as a young schoolboy I lived further down south in England and often saw the American Fortresses going to, and returning (not all of them!) from their daylight raids over Germany . A fine tribute to those American airmen wo gave their lives over Europe.

This stirring war film about the Eight Air Force and their war against the German Luftwaffe was written by Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay, Jr. . It starred Gregory Peck as the Colonel, Frank Savage, head of the 918th Bomber Group assigned to making winged warfare succeed where his nice-guy predecessor, ably played as always by Gary Merrill, had failed. He is aided by brilliant Dean Jagger as Harvey Stovall his exec, his honest Boss Millard Mitchell, and others; but his chief opponent turns out to be the men themselves, not the Nazis...he has to completely turn their thinking around, make them write off survival and think only in terms of getting the job done--so they will have the best chance to maintain group integrity in the air. bomb their targets, and get home safely afterward. How he does this, by stalling their requests for transfer and winning them over to his way--the American way--of making war produces a powerful story. Others in the large, but uneven cast include capable Hugh Marlowe, John Kellogg, Bob Patten, Lawrence Dobkin, Joyce Mackenzie and many others credited and not. This epic was directed by veteran Henry King in what most believe is masterful fashion in B/W. Music was supplied by Alfred Newman and cinematography was done by Leon Shamroy. Art directors Maurice Ransford and Lyle Wheeler deserve every praise for the style they infused into the entire production, mixing actual war footage with their new scenes. Sets such as the large hut where missions are outlined, HQ House, the general's office, the bar, the now-overgrown airfield, the hospital and the airplane interior shots are all memorable achievements. The climax of the film is compromised a bit by changing the original storyline; instead of merely being unable to fly and watching his men get the job done without him, in the filmed version Savage has a near-breakdown from which he rouses only when his pilots begin arriving home. But there is so much power in this film and in its message that self-assertion is better than sloppiness, cowardice, inattention, non-cooperation, defeatism, et al, the film justifiably is still a well-beloved. Frequently, it provides an unforgettable look at how U.S.'s officers and men had to grow up as military operatives in the throes of WWII. To see the men in the film have to watch their Toby mug being turned around, signaling the beginning of another call to mission is moving; the film's opening, when having found the mug again in a shop, tourist Jagger takes it with him, climbs a fence into a field and finds the already-disappearing remains of the hardtracks down which B-17s had so recently roared, carrying the fight to the enemy and men to their deaths or heroisms or both--is frankly a classic sequence; it is also the scene which leads to the film being told as a flashback recounting the events of Savage's vital assignment. Highly recommended.