Suprema decisione

This is one of the best WW2 movies. The acting and writing are superb and rather subdued at that. With Clark Gable you expect BIG ACTING AND BIG ACTION but in this one he does a very credible job portraying a very troubled man who is put in charge of the bombing campaign against the Germans. So, this movie is a bit of a stretch for the usually glib Gable, as it focuses on the emotional toll of war.

The movie is VERY similar to the great 12 O'Clock High (starring Gregory Peck). 12 O'Clock is a slightly better movie (and it gives Peck more room to hash out his character as the man in charge of sending airmen to their deaths), though they are so good I recommend seeing both.

"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.

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".

In a larger sense "Command Decision" is not really a war movie but a film about the responsibility of command and leadership. It is one of the few films that effectively explores these topics; and belongs right up there with the original "Flight of the Phoenix" and "The Red Tent". Not having the visual power of those two films (the limited combat/action scenes are almost entirely stock footage), it must focus more narrowly on the human complications arising from the responsibility of command. The contradiction being that while a leader must cease to be human, no one who can do this is fit to be a leader.

Adapted from a stage play, "Command Decision" suffers from a fair amount of "long-windedness". Fortunately the most long-winded character (Major General Kane-played by Walter Pigeon), is well written and has many substantial things to convey. Much like his character in "Forbidden Planet", Pigeon is tasked with inserting historical and philosophical details into the story, and his commanding screen presence makes him ideal for this purpose.

Brigadier General K.C. Dennis (Clark Gable) has the most screen time and most challenging role, as his character is the guy stuck between a rock and a hard place. He is accountable for making the hard decisions that send his men off to die, but has a fragile authority dependent on how much independence his superiors are allowing him at a particular point in time. Gable does fine in this part, probably his best totally "serious" performance. Although the film takes pains to use the German high command to illustrate examples of bad leadership, it is easy to infer that the same mindset applies to the Allies. With many military leaders distorting events to cover their own ass and willing to sacrifice men for their own career advancement and personal ideology.

The premise of the film is the Air Corps discovery that the Germans have developed the first jet combat plane. Based on the real life Messerschmitt Me-262 (shown as a model in the film and in some archival footage), it is called the "Lantze-Wolf" here and considered so effective as a fighter aircraft that full production would allow the Luftwaffe to regain air supremacy over Europe.

The planes are being assembled in three cities deep in Germany. The only hope to delay their full production is "Operation Stitch" (named for its goal of gaining a stitch in time), a plan to attack these sites through dangerous daylight bombing raids. Dangerous because they will be heavily defended and because the bombers will have to go the final hundred miles without fighter escort-since the America fighters do not have the range to reach and return from the target. This type of daylight bombing was called precision bombing because the bomb-site was more effective with better visibility and a lower altitude. The alternative was safer but less accurate saturation bombing at night (insert Dresden here).

General Dennis must decide whether to start the operation, and then when the bombers take substantial punishment he must decide whether to continue in the expectation of additional high losses.

The film takes certain historical liberties as only after a postwar evaluation of the actual ME-262 did anyone really understand its strategic potential (in the hands of well trained pilots) as a fighter aircraft. Until the end Hitler insisted that it be utilized almost exclusively as a bomber. Although able to carry out this alternative role, its bomb load capacity was too little for any significant impact. That the ME-262 is more a footnote to the war than a major element was due more to Hitler's decision than to any allied efforts to limit its production.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Just saw this on TCM. The story of generals fighting generals, press officers, politicians, etc. There's a few cliches, like the pilot who get news his wife has had a son gets killed during a mission. Don't expect Gable to give an over-the-top performance. It was originally a stage play -- so there are lots of one-on-one confrontations -- they are all done well.

There are no special effects, no women, no air battles. There's spliced in newsreel footage of a plane that lands and explodes. 1948 audiences couldn't really appreciate the abstraction of "air supremacy" that is the heart of the fight here. In our post-Gulf War post-Afghan War -- we now can appreciate the vision of men who took these risks -- so I'd say there's a special historical importance to this film. Check around the web for info on Gable's WW II service record -- he enlisted at age 41 into the Army Air Corps.