Broken Journey

An airplane flying over the Alps has engine trouble and has to land on a glacier. The radio is busted, so they can't tell folks where they are. The passengers and crew try to survive with dwindling supplies and little chance of being found. A fairly typical disaster film scenario where a cast of colourful characters including an actress, a boxer, an opera singer and a man in an iron lung face a crisis. The cast of British character actors unsurprisingly do a fairly good job with the formula.

A group of folks are on a plane that crash lands high in the Swiss Alps. Their radio is flat so they have to decide whether to stick it out in the (relative) safety of their aircraft or set off to find help. It's got quite a good British cast - a starring performance from Francis L. Sullivan with Guy Rolfe & Phyllis Calvert et al but the characters are all pretty unattractive and by the end I really didn't much care if they survived or not... It is also quite dialogue heavy with precious little actual action once the plane has skidded to it's lofty stop..........................................

A plane crashes in the arctic and the film follows the efforts of the survivors to get rescued with a few casualties on the way. There is even a passenger in an iron lung!

The cast aren't worth mentioning because they are all interchangeable and it is impossible to identify with any of them. As regards the story, nothing really happens to hold the viewer's interest. You have to wait about 45 minutes before the first bit of action after the plane crashes. And this is what happens - some bloke slips off a ledge and doesn't fall very far. Then a bit of snow lands on his face. It's hilarious.

There is also a fault with the whole psychology of the film - most characters seem to be quite horrid to each other, when in reality they would all be pulling together.

It's a slow moving film, devoid of any tension or drama and it is just not quite interesting enough. "Five Came Back" from 1939 is a much better film about a plane crash and a group of survivors.

I assume it is not a spoiler to say this film is about a plane crash in the alps.

If you are a fan of 1940s british films you will recognise most of the cast and perhaps the writer ,the director and the writer of the music.

I am a big fan of old British films,and films featuring forms of transport so I like seeing this one.

I am not saying it is an undiscovered classic but I think it is watchable.

Some of the comments on here are rather harsh.

I watch a lot of old films and this easier to enjoy in 2023 than many made at this time.

The script writer was Robert Westerby whose work I have come to like and look out for.

This was made in 1948 and characters are still going on about the war.

As in most later disaster film the characters are mixed bunch,I can't say they a believeable mix but we must remember that at this time foreign travel was not common for ordinary people.

IMDB is full of people who know a lot about cinema history,can anyone think of any older disaster films than this one?

Very enjoyable and hilarious in places, although I'm not sure if that was always intentional!