365+ movies in 365 Days: Day 109 - Danger In The Skies - Part II: Airport

In 1970 Ross Hunter and Universal pictures ushered in the modern day disaster movie with the film Airport. Based on Arthur Hailey's best selling novel, this big budget film featured an all star cast and was a huge success at the box office. It is one of the few pre-1975 films to gross over $100 million at the box office. Adjusted for inflation the film would be the 42nd highest grossing film in Hollywood history. The film was a critical success and received ten Academy Award nominations including Best Picture.

The film features Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jacqueline Bissette, Jean Seberg, Helen Hayes, George Kennedy, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapelton, Barry Nelson, Dana Wynter, Lloyd Nolan and Barbara Hale.
The story focuses on an airport trying to operate during a major snow storm and a flight to Rome that has a suicidal bomber on board.

By today's standards the movie is an artifact. It represents a bygone era of travel and film making. In the movie passengers and non-passengers have easy access to jet ways. So easy in fact, there is a stowaway on board. Passengers smoke in the cabin and the crew smoke in the cockpit. The food service is on real china in first class and tourist. And, as you enter the terminal, you have an opportunity to purchase instant flight insurance at a concession booth. A ticket to Rome cost $474.00 and a Boeing 707 cost eight million. The film represents the height of the Jet Age, when air travel was both glamorous and accessible and people still dressed up to travel.

The movie also represents a type of movie making that was also going out of style. The ensemble melodrama with stiff dialogue and no cursing. Everything and everyone looked crisp and clean-cut. the movie has a slick look that disappeared from Hollywood films of the 1970's. The film also makes multiple use of the split screen technique popularized in the 1960's and went out of style soon after.

Arthur Hailey's books were well researched "potboilers" that took you inside a particular industry, airlines, hotels, banking, pharmaceutical, etc. and put ordinary people into crisis situations. He created multiple story lines with large casts of characters that all inter-twined and came together in the end. This formula worked well for his best sellers, but the movies made from them come off riddled with cliches and bad dialogue and Airport is no exception. Some of the characters and situations in the book were cut out for the movie, but it still leaves too many plot entanglements.The screenplay by director George Seaton gives the cast "B" picture quality dialogue to work with. The two leads, Burt Lancaster as the airport manager and Dean Martin as the pilot of the stricken plan come off the worse for it.

The film drags a bit in the center, but when the action heats up on the plane, things speed up and the last 45 minutes offer a modest degree of suspense.

I saw this movie when I was ten years old at the Pequa Theatre in Massapequa, NY. For all it's Hollywood cheese it still is an emotional favorite of mine. I love the score by Alfred Newman and the look and feel of the movie. I laugh at some of the line readings now, and at the acting style , particularly Van Heflin, but when Dean Martin declares "we've got the lights" I still remember being that ten year old kid in the sitting in the dark watching a very suspenseful movie.

At the Movie House rating *** stars