Flight

The plot is certainly familiar from many other movies, notably "Tell it to the Marines". The old timer versus the cheeky new recruit. And of course the girl that the sergeant wants is actually in love with the recruit, who feels rotten about it because the sergeant has been so nice to him. But the characters are interesting, particularly Jack Holt's,the camaraderie is nice to watch and there is plenty of action, flying scenes and battle scenes,fascinating shots of old time airplanes, all of which make this a fun movie to watch, which after all is the important thing in a movie of this type.Very pleasant entertainment in spite of the sound problems.

Frank Capra made a trilogy of action dramas starring Ralph Graves and Jack Holt (Tim Holt's father) as rivals in some branch of the military service. Holt always played the cautious older man who followed regulations, Graves his impetuous younger rival. A woman always came between them. "Dirigible" is probably the best of the three, although "Submarine" (a silent film) and "Flight" are excellent too.

The only flaw in "Flight" is that it's a little too similar to the better-known "Wings" and "Tell It to the Marines", both of which were bigger box-office hits.

The opening scene in 'Flight' is based on a real-life event that had made headlines a few months earlier. In the Rose Bowl football match on New Year's Day, 1929, a college football player named Roy Riegels carried the ball 64-1/2 yards the wrong way, very nearly scoring an own goal when a teammate finally stopped him on the one-yard line. (The rival team ran interference for him against his own side!) A news photo of this event received nationwide distribution, and Riegels became a laughingstock. (Actually, when I saw 'Flight', all I knew about the Riegels incident was the famous Rose Bowl photograph. I looked up all the specifics before I posted this review. Did you really think I've got all this information memorised?)

"Flight" uses this true incident to begin its fictional story. Lefty Phelps (Ralph Graves) isn't noticeably left-handed, but he's a promising college athlete who's all set to triumph in the big game. Phelps runs the wrong way, scoring the winning touchdown for the wrong team. A photo of Phelps achieving this error gets national distribution, and Phelps becomes the butt of jokes. (We see a close-up of the Riegels photo - a well-known image in 1929 - substituting as a photo of Ralph Graves.) Phelps decides that he's ruined for life, but a friendly recruiting agent suggests that he can make a clean start by enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps. Phelps decides to become a pilot, as that's the most glamorous job in the military.

There's a very funny scene when Phelps completes his first training flight. I'm really surprised that this gag sequence (dealing with nausea and vomiting) made it into the movie. Ralph Graves steps out of the plane with one hand over his mouth, and we can tell by the look on his face that he's going to be sick. Graves looks round desperately, and then we see an immense close-up of a bucket at the far end of the runway. Graves runs all the way to the bucket with one hand over his mouth and the other hand over his gut. Will he make it in time? The pay-off is hilarious.

During his training, Phelps becomes attracted to an Army nurse (played by Lila Lee) and he runs afoul of topkick Sergeant Williams (Jack Holt). Williams thinks Phelps is paying too much attention to girls, and not enough attention to his flight training. As soon as Phelps completes his pilot training, the United States Marines invade Nicaragua (wot, again?), and off we go to Central America. There's a slam-bang action climax. Lila Lee was a very pretty actress, unfairly forgotten today. (She was also the mother of James Kirkwood Junior, who wrote "A Chorus Line".) "Flight" and "The Unholy Three" are the best examples of her talents and beauty. I'll rate 'Flight' 10 out of 10; a splendid example of early Capra.

Frank Capra made three films with the same two actors, Jack Holt and Ralph Graves, probably in an effort to establish the male buddy film. It would take James Cagney and Pat O'Brien to get that genre off the ground. Flight is the second of those three Graves/Holt films and the first one in sound.

It also has the same kind of roughhouse humor that would characterize the work of John Ford. In fact if you didn't know this was an early Capra film, you'd swear Ford did it.

Flight is certainly a film from the headlines of the day. It begins with college football hero Ralph Graves making a spectacular run in the Rose Bowl, the wrong way. Capra made no secret of it, he was at the Rose Bowl that year with Harry Cohn and saw Roy Rieggles playing for USC get turned around in eluding tacklers and made a spectacular run the wrong way and scored the margin of victory for Georgia Tech. The poor man never lived it down.

In fact Graves decides the Marine Corps is the place for blessed anonymity and he gets involved with aviation under the tutelage of Jack Holt. But the two of them have a falling out over nurse Lila Lees. Later on they see action in Nicaragua where the USA was maintaining a presence in hunting down those original Sandinistas.

The Marine aviators rescue a company of Marines in a Dienbienphu like situation with the Sandinistas. The battle scenes were very well staged.

Flight is not a typical Frank Capra film because Frank Capra had not found his style and type of story. Still it's a well made action film for the time.

One of several attempts to talk-up William A. Wellman's high flying "Wings" (1927) **********. This time, the leading threesome form the more traditional triangle of love -- younger Marine pilot Ralph Graves (as Lefty Phelps) and his mentor/Sergeant Jack Holt as (Panama Williams) are in both love with lovely nurse Lila Lee (as Elinor Murray). Ms. Lee loves Mr. Graves (in a romantic way). Mr. Graves loves Lee (in a romantic way) and Mr. Holt (in a fatherly way). Circumstances put the characters' relationships in turmoil, and danger…

An interesting early effort by director Frank Capra; but, of course, it is nowhere near his best. Harold Goodwin has a great supporting role (as Steve Roberts). Graves and Holt are a reliable team. Graves seems a little younger and Holt a little older than they appear; the actors are about the same age, however; and, they have a nice rapport.

Watch for a scene right after the "stuck in the mud" segment concludes -- in their tent, Holt scolds Graves for wanting to go out and get "tight"; he tries to pull his pal's shirt off, but Graves resists. Then, the men wrestle, which ends up with Holt pulling Graves' legs up to give him a spanking! As a bonus, Graves' hairpiece almost flips off his head!

I recently saw this on Turner Classics. I had never seen this film from the early days of talking pictures before. Adding to its historic value is that it's directed by legendary Frank Capra from early in his career. Actor Ralph Graves who plays Lefty Phillips wrote the story, using two unrelated actual current events of the day to bookend his story; a wrong-way run in the Rose Bowl and a rogue general in Nicaragua. The Phillips character is based on Roy 'Wrong Way' Riegels who played for Cal-Berkeley against Georgia Tech in the 1929 Rose Bowl. He picked up a fumble, was spun around and ran 65 yards the wrong way before being stopped short of the opponent's goal. Lefty is distraught by the humiliation and goes on to join the Marines Navy Air Corps. Riegels would later join the Army Air Corps in WWII so it's kind of like art imitating life and then life imitating art. Jack Holt is Sgt. Panama Williams who trains the pilots. Lila Lee is nurse Elinor Murray, the love interest of both Panama and Lefty. Panama, Lefty and Elinor are all sent to Nicaragua where a rogue general and his guerrilla army have killed US Marines stationed there. In reality US Marines were in Nicaragua from 1927 to 1933. Small individual armies roamed the country and the US government was instituting a unified national guard and set up Anastasio Somoza Garcia to run it. General Augusto César Sandino was a guerrilla leader who's forces fought against the US Marines for five years. In this ficitonalized account of that conflict, Sandino is a character named Lobo played by Jimmy de la Cruze. Elmer Dyer who shot the aerial scenes for such Films as Hell's Angels, Lost Horizon, The Dawn Patrol and Air Force is the principal Ariel photographer on this film and Joe Novak and Joseph Walker are cinematographers. Howard J. Green wrote the screenplay from Graves' original story with additional dialogue from director Capra. Holt had the most successful and long- lived film career of the three lead actors. An established silent film star, he smoothly made the transition to sound films and had a long career in b-westerns and crime movies. Graves was a silent film actor who's continued success was limited to the 1930's. He made a couple films in the 40's in minor roles and then his career was over. Lee was at the peak of her career here having made 11 films in 1928, 9 in 1929 and 6 in 1930 before her career began to taper off. She was a promising silent film actor who never lived up to the expectations the studio had for her after making the transition from silents to sound. This isn't a great film. It's kind of silly and awkward at times but it's well done and fun to see a Capra film just seven years into his directorial career and the film has it's early sound and early aviation historic value. It's worth a look. I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.