Les chevaliers du ciel

A great idea to shoot this picture in Canada AND in colour, as the scenery just wouldn't have had the same impact in black and white. Cagney, as bush pilot Brian McLean, is his typical bad-boy self. Something theater audiences around the world had come to expect. Some favorite lines: "If you're lookin' for me, I'll be the drunkest man in the biggest hotel in Ottawa", "I like to swipe my jobs honestly" or "You worked up enough lather to shave all of Montreal".

The first half of the picture seems to set up the conflict he initiates between he and Dennis Morgan back in the rugged bush country of Northern Ontario, while the second half resolves the conflict through Cagney's humbling. Brenda Marshall is stunning as a manipulative small-town tart. Her good sense, or lack of same, is painfully evident when she begs Morgan to "Please take me to Winnipeg!" I understand a North Bay area woman had the good fortune of doubling for Marshall during the scene where Cagney's plane brushes just above her head, as she waves at him from a haystack.

I got the biggest kick from the scene where Cagney and Hale go on and on about Billy Bishop, who is a native of a city in my local area (Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada). Everyone who grew up in Owen Sound and surrounding Grey County knows the name William Avery "Billy" Bishop, a legendary WWI flying ace, who had been promoted to Air Marshal during WWII. After viewing many still photos and silent films of Bishop, this was my first opportunity to see the man move, walk and talk. When I viewed COTC for the first time, I was stunned to find that the Owen Sound Library didn't yet have a copy of COTC (they assure me this is soon to be remedied), but the Bishop Heritage Museum in his native city definitely does and featured COTC on a "Movie at the Museum" night in early 2006.

To clarify a question by one of the previous reviewers, Air Marshal Bishop's comments to the Texan pilot ("Ahhh Texas! One of our most loyal provinces!") is clearly a joke. Bishop, who appears quite comfortable in front of the camera, was undoubtedly improvising with a little dry Grey County wit. Exhibiting a voice and manner that is a cross between Foster Hewitt and Lester Pearson, how can you deny Mr. Bishop was Canadian! I swore Alan Hale Sr. was going to thwack Cagney with his skipper's hat, he was so similar to his son, Alan Jr. of Gilligan's Island fame and seeing Abner Kravitz (of Bewitched fame) before he hitched up with Gladys is a treat, too. We even get a cameo of the actor who played Mr. Brewster from the Beverly Hillbillies. Some interesting TV connections to this 1942 flick.

The North Bay interest in this Hollywood movie, the first one shot entirely on location in Canada, is well documented. See the several pages on the "miscellaneous" link for this film from the North Bay Nugget. One link, on famous Canadian cartoonist Lynn Johnston's website, claims the flick was shot not far from her art studios on Trout Lake, near Corbeil.

The comments of earlier folks were appreciated .As a Canadian viewer I too appreciated it's accurate parts.And I also thought that Jimmies New Yawk accent was funny for a Canadian .The sentiment was great and the overall picture was good for the times .

In the scene in a pub where the boys sang "Bless Them All" and two of them lamented being rejected from flight school , it was interesting to note (along with the wonderful nostalgia throughout)the long necked beer bottles they drank from.

We old timers knew that they were the originals,before stubby bottles. I say this after recently hearing young people refer to the fact that there used to be stubby beer bottles before the present long neck bottles .Or ,was that only here in B.C.?

Thanks to one commenter for the aircraft info too . And another , for the location of the lake .

"Captains of the Clouds", it has always seemed to me, is two distinct movies wrapped up into one. What begins as a crisp, light-hearted, colorful story about bush pilots in Canada suddenly transforms itself into a single-minded grim documentary about the Royal Canadian Air Force in the opening days of World War Two.

I don't suppose this abrupt transition from a light-hearted, peacetime human-interest story to an intense procedural war drama would have occurred if the War had not coincided with the production of the film.

James Cagney and Dennis Morgan, the male stars, were well cast for the peacetime opening acts and scenes of "Captains...". Both of them being fine actors, they were also well cast for the grim wartime sequences.

This is an odd and fascinating film that bears watching again and again.

Even tho it's pretty much of a "formula" movie, CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS is GREAT fun, and one of my favorite Cagney films. It truth, it's a lot more than that in film history, in addition to having some very intriguing legal ramifications. It contains things that appeal to a wide audience on many levels.

For the airplane nuts out there this one is NOT TO BE MISSED! Many of the aircraft are types that have no other screen exposure, and which today are museum pieces... if examples of them still exist at all. The roster of military and civilian planes makes you DROOL... Tiger Moths (used as RCAF primary flight trainers), AT-6 Texans / Harvards, Lockheed Hudsons, Lysanders (as bush planes), and the most interesting of all... a now EXTREMELY RARE Hawker Hurricane, wearing Nazi markings and playing the part of a Messerschmidt! I suppose the Hayes Office censors kept the script writers from calling it a Fokker, just because THIS cast of reprobates was a wild and crazy enough crew to use that name to try to slip through a few double ententes!

Besides Cagney, the cast is PURE Warner Brothers stock players. Alan Hale always turned in a good performance, and he does it here too as bush pilot Francis Patrick "Tiny" Murphy. Comedic actor Reginald Gardener turns in an excellent, low key performance as "Scrounger", but his subtle comedy is totally upstaged by George Tobias as "Blimp" Lebec, using an absurd mustasche, outrageous costume, and the most outrageous and overblown French Canadian accent ever seen on film!

The story is a combination of wartime flag waver and fairly standard period drama, along with a dash of Saturday afternoon at the movies pot boiler serial thrown in; the final sequence with Cagney versus the Nazi fighter is PURE Hollywood schmaltz, but it's a load of fun.

CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS, and the similarly themed A YANK IN THE RAF (Tyrone Power) were the prototypes that set the stage for a hundred other wartime flag wavers yet to come. CAPTAINS was walking into new and unique territory; in theory anyway, Cagney, Hale, Tobias, and every other American involved in the production could have been tried for sedition and imprisoned... oddly enough, for purely patriotic reasons.

At the time CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS was filmed, World War 2 was already in progress with the United States remaining on the sidelines as a neutral. Canada, being part of the British Commonwealth, provided assistance to embattled England. Under the terms of the US Neutrality Act, as a combatant Canada was NOT our ally. The provisions of the Act forbade Americans from lending material assistance to Canada, and CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS fell into the category of providing propaganda for use by a belligerent nation! According to some sources, the cast and crew were a bit nervous when they crossed the border to return to the United States at the end of filming; the possibility existed that they'd be arrested by Federal agents.

This odd state of political affairs was shown significantly in A YANK IN THE RAF. An early sequence shows American airplanes being provided to Canada by the simple expedient of landing them at the Canadian border, and everyone involved just ignores it as the planes, sans pilots, are pulled away by a stout rope extending across the border into Canada! Such tactics really were employed in the days before Pearl Harbor.

In any case... CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS provides it's share of Hollywood ballyhoo too with one of the most campy musical numbers ever made for a movie. In a Canadian nightclub, a male chorus of singing waiters belt out the title song, while cigarette girls in quasi military costume (complete with wings across their blouses) provide a dancing floor show! It's a HOOT!!!

In any event... CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS is a snapshot of a simpler time when war wasn't such a contentious matter and the lines between right and wrong were much simpler. It's a good way to spend a couple of hours.

Even if I wasn't such a rabid Cagney fan, I'd still give this one a Thumbs Up!

• Having grown up in North Bay Ontario Canada, I would like to point out that the first part of Captains of the Clouds was set on Trout Lake near North Bay . The Actors stayed at The Empire Hotel in North Bay.

All of the people of North Bay were excited about this movie and many of us crowded around the entrance to the Hotel and every other place the Stars were sighted. It was certainly a memorable time for the residents of North Bay!! There are more details I would love to add but at this point I would like to ask if there are any reviews that include ALL the areas where Captains of the Clouds was set? Thank you.

Patricia Kennedy