Top of the World

Before there was Top Gun, there was Top of the World. The U. S. Air Force is the star of the picture with extensive USAF footage. Aviation fans will love seeing the footage of an array of planes.

The love melodrama on the ground never really takes off and you won't need to buckle your seat belts for the climactic rescue mission.

The film would have benefited greatly from wide-screen cinematography instead of the 4:3 aspect ratio. I imagine the filmmakers were forced to go 4:3 to match the film acquired by USAF.

Performances by all the leads are okay. Supporting cast, particularly of the endangered crew, are, unfortunately, underdeveloped.

This movie is a classic 1950's-style gawdawful, low budget (very low budget) love-triangle-in-uniform melodrama with a very grade B script and even worse directing (it should should have gotten the Anti-Oscar for Most Indifferent Director, which is why I gave it only a 5). The romantic lead, Dale Robertson, looks like he had been groomed to be the TV stand-in for Clark Gable, which while that might seem obvious, does not mean it was done well. The better-known Evelyn Keyes plays the Woman With A Past. Parts small enough to be cameos fall to Paul Fix and the now very late William Schallert (R.I.P.), but since neither were really famous yet you can't really call them cameos. As the (equally) very tragically late Joan Rivers might have put it, my overall reaction was, please, gag me with a spoon.

There is a little bit there for aviation enthusiasts, though, which is why I watched it. The film features prominently near-stock footage of some unusual and even rarely-seen aircraft in flight, beginning with a classic Cessna 195 on skis in rare Air Force Rescue livery and including an entire formation of B-17 Flying Fortresses also in Air Rescue mode, various C-47 (Douglas DC-3) aircraft on skis, another C-47 towing and retrieving a Word-War-II-style invasion glider, and rare footage of the bizarre F-82 Twin Mustang in action. The movie ends with an almost purely gratuitous flyover of a full formation of B-36 Peacemaker thermonuclear strategic bombers (almost purely gratuitous because they have absolutely nothing to do with the plot, per se, however appropriate they might be to the theme) and begins with a number of equally gratuitous jet fighter flyovers (complete with exciting jet-flyover sounds) because in 1955, United States Air Force fighter jets were still near the cutting edge of cool even after nearly 10 years of Cold War deployments. Fun for plane spotters and instructive for film students to see a textbook example of 1950's very-low-budget melodramatic schmaltz.

Apparently this isn't easy to find. The new Sony/MGM digital broadcast network dug it out of their vaults and aired it several times recently.

I saw one of those broadcasts, and found ti to be mostly an interesting adventure film whenever the main plot device of a weather tracking expedition to nearby the North Pole is involved, and the rescue of the Air Force men who end up stranded there.

It was much less interesting when dealing with the melodramatic subplot of the two major officers and their girls, and who would get which girl. That part was pretty unappealing and, in terms of being realistic, quite obtuse. It seemed added on to the major plot in order to bring ladies into the theater. Ladies of the 1950s that is, not modern girls.

Still the adventure aspect is fun, and especially the rescue of the last man on the crumbling ice island.

The plot is a cliché, and the acting is barely B-movie serviceable, but the film is an interesting look at the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s. The film features a C-47 (DC-3) on skis, an Air Force glider (similar to those used at the Normandy landings in WWII), and the rarely seen F-82 Twin Mustang. Incidentally, the aircraft used in the film indicate that principal photography must have taken place well before the film's 1955 release; the Air Force retired its very last F-82 in June, 1953, and the piston-powered B-36 bombers featured in the melodramatic formation flight that closes the film were old news by the mid-1950's, by which time jet powered B-52 had begun to replace them.

Every actor from that time and their cousin is in this movie. You expect that from a major movie but what is it about "Top of the World" that drew them in?

Maj. Lee Gannon (Dale Robertson) is too old and too slow to be a jet pilot. Strange that is why I left the reserves. To add to that his Ex-wife is not doing so well with a joint of her own in Alaska that see gage back alimony checks.

Wait he has a choice of leaving the force or transferring (here it comes) to Alaska. You guessed it and as the story unfolds, we get a glimpse of the past, present and possible futures.

There are love triangles inside triangles and so forth. A real tesseract.

On top of that we get to see Top of the World. A secret mission that is kept up with the daily news.

We have a real tearjerker here.

Keep your fingers crosse.

Looks like they showed a lot of B36 Peacemakers at the last minute.