L'Équipage

Anatole Litvak's work is huge:there are German,French and American productions in an uneven filmography.Most people know for sure "Anastasia" "snake pit" and the suspenseful "sorry wrong number".His "Mayerling" was superior to Terence Young's .The weakest works came at the end of his career:"nights of the generals" "aimez-vous Brahms" or le couteau dans la plaie" are dreadful stuff.

"L'equipage" belongs to his first French period.It has been wonderfully restored and the pictures are sometimes really stunning.Litvak takes a subject as old as the hills (a love triangle) and succeeds in grabing the viewer.It takes place during WW1 .Two pilots team up (the title means "the crew");one of them is his pal's wife's lover.

The score is lovely featuring Chopin and French old military songs like "auprès de ma blonde" .

Remarkable sequences: the soldiers leaving for the war ,on a train ;the stifling atmosphere of the honky-tonk where girls dance FRench cancan;and above all (no pun intended),all the scenes in the sky where Litvak uses the planes,the submachine guns and the clouds with great skill.The last scene when the clouds turn black as Aumont is dying is still impressive by today's standards.

Fine performances by Charles Vanel (the husband)and Jean-Pierre Aumont (the lover).Annabella (who would become Tyrone Power's wife ),even by today's canons is still photogenic which is not the case of many actresses of the thirties.

NB:Aumont and Annabella were reunited in Marcel Carne's "Hôtel du Nord" but that time,they were out-shadowed by the supporting cast,Arletty and Louis Jouvet.

For those able to do a side by side comparison between this original French production and the American version Litvak did a couple of years later when he was in the US, L'Equipage is the better of the two. For one thing it has ,about 80 minutes in, some of the best aviation photography outside of Only Angels Have Wings, Litvak simply borrowed some of it as well as the Honneger musical accompaniment for the remake. Charles Vanel has more warmth in the lead than Paul Muni, who seems like a stuffed shirt in comparison. Annabella has more tenderness than the somewhat hard edged and brittle Miriam Hopkins And handsome young Jean Pierre Aumont as the rival is more likeable than Louis Hayward The arrival at the front seems darker and more somber in the earlier version as well. An added detail for those who know French: Vanel and Aumont go back and forth between using the polite Vous (at first) to the more familiar Tu, and then later back to Vous again.