Christian Kayßler runs a training school for Luftwaffe fliers. Otto Wernicke is in charge of keeping the machines up to snuff. Both are veterans from the Great War, sloughed off by the Treaty of Versailles, and happy to be back in harness. Their reminiscences and flashbacks provide depth to the story and illustrate the virtues they try to foster without bitterness. Their two best pilots are Heinz Welzel and Hermann Braun. Their friendly competition turns angry, and they crash a plane. Even though they come to a rapprochement and are good friends again, Kayßler grounds them. But when an emergency arises during the Air-Navy wargames, can he win without them?
What I've described is the sort of movie that might have starred Cagney and O'Brien at Warners, or Chester Morris and Robert Young at MGM, with Lewis Stone as the CO, Wallace Beery in the Wernicke role, all nicely written by Frank Weade. It was a standard sort of movie for the air-minded moviegoer, and it's a pretty good example. Certainly the big kerfuffle when a bomb gets trapped in the aiming mechanism is exciting and well shot.
Were that it, it would be fine. Being a 21st Century American, I was taken aback by the references to the Fuehrer atop Germany, his planes, his materiel. I have issues with the cult of personality wherever it arises -- I've seen it in Soviet films of the era, invisible choruses singing about Stalin Great Blue Sky that reminds me of the phrase "G*d's Good Green Earth". In the US, no one ever swore by FDR, although there were plenty of people willing to swear at that man in the White House. The apparent belief in the Great Man that seems to afflict about a quarter of my country fills me with concerns for its future.
Well, perhaps I'm just getting old. Meanwhile, back to this movie: although I have seen its like several times before, it's a well done example of the sort. Certainly worth your time, if only for the action sequences and Wernicke.
