L'Équipage

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.