Captains of the Clouds

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!

"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.

Watching Captains of the Clouds yesterday, I was struck by the fact that at the time it was made, Canada had no film industry to speak of. If they had I'm sure it would have been a different film.

I yield to no one in my admiration of James Cagney as actor. But quite frankly, he's too urban, too much from the sidewalks of New York to be a convincing Canadian bush pilot. But Brian McLean is a typical cocky Cagney character. So if you can get past Cagney's speech pattern, you'll enjoy the film.

Nice location shooting. I'm not sure where the outdoors stuff was filmed, but it looked convincingly Canadian for me. Shots of Ottawa were blended nicely with back lot studio stuff.

Of the rest of the cast only George Tobias attempts an accent and he's a French Canadien. The rest of the cast does well with old scene stealer Alan Hale leading the pack.

But the official Canadian imprimatur was put on the film because Air Marshal William Bishop appears in it in a scene where graduating fliers are given their wings. For those who don't know, Billy Bishop was the finest of air aces on the Allied side in World War I. He had more confirmed kills than anyone else. He was one of the biggest heroes in Canada at that time and still is held in the highest regard by Canadians.

One thing I am sure though. Billy Bishop may have appeared in the movie, but I can't help thinking he would have much preferred the whole thing be done under Canadian auspices if it could have been.

Okay, I'll admit that this film is NOT Shakespeare! In fact, at times the plot is VERY VERY formulaic and silly but somehow the overall package is still quite entertaining.

Jimmy Cagney is the main lead of the film, though it actually has an ensemble cast consisting of Dennis Morgan and other Warner Brothers regulars. And unfortunately, the worst part of this film is Cagney's character, as he plays essentially the exact same character he played in so many Warner films. You know,...the brash and obnoxious guy who seems greatly in need of a comeuppance (such as in THE FIGHTING 69th and MANY other films). It's too bad, as the rest of the plot is very very good and this is a wonderful propaganda film meant to bolster support for the war. In fact, the more I think about it, Cagney's character and how it was written so derivatively is the only real problem in the film. It's a shame really, as apart from this the acting is excellent and the Technicolor scenes of the Canadian wilderness and flying are beautiful.

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 .