Out of the Clouds

Ealing loved its portmanteau films.If the stories are good enough eg Dead of Night then the film becomes a classic.If they are as bad as these then the film becomes instantly forgettable.None of the stories in this film is of much interest,and the love story is badly written and acted.Having seen this film before I decided to fast forward through the sequences featuring this laboured tale of romance.Therefore the only real interest is in watching a film set in an airport at the beginning of the jet age and comparing the differences to the current age of jet travel.Everything seems so stress free and controlled unlike today's environment.By the way this was definitely not a B feature.Colour was too expensive for B features in the fifties,it just feels like a B Feature.

I watched this on December 21st of December 2006, and it's really a thick fog covering most of the country, including of course London airports. The t.v. was full of pictures of massive crowds trying to get away. This film took you back to the same airport that is fog bound today. In those days it looked almost an enjoyment to be fog bound. It's a great old film full of atmosphere of the times. No drunken swearing passengers dressed as if they had come straight from work, all well behaved passengers who spoke very well and behaved admirably. None of the passengers complained it was the airports fault like today, all agreed it was the terrible weather. Good old fashion British black and white film, with stars of the day. Watch it again and again and you will find its different every time, its almost as if you were there It does what 'Oh Mr. Porter' and the 'Ghost train' did for rail travel fans, pure yester year atmosphere. Peachy Mead

An amusing and quaint period piece with a couple of interesting parallels with life today (holocaust references and international drug smuggling). A good cast but the true stars are BOAC's Lockheed Super Constellation and the transatlantic Boeing Stratocruiser. Objects of beauty confined to museums these days.

This is a fascinating ensemble piece, well directed by Basil Dearden, which creates a combination of personal dramas involving pilots, passengers, and airport personnel and shows how their stories cross and intermingle. Robert Beatty plays an ex-pilot who has become the head of operations at the airport, but hates being on the ground and longs to get back to his old job of flying over the Atlantic. But the doctor will not pass him. James Robertson Justice is an experienced pilot who repeatedly refuses to take off in a plane because he rightly says he hears something wrong with one of the four engines. Sid James has a bit part. There is a touching love story about two young people (played by David Knight and Margo Lorenz) who meet at the airport while waiting for their delayed planes to take off in opposite directions. The film works very well dramatically, but its chief interest today is the extraordinary portrait of Heathrow Airport as it was in the mid-1950s. In those days you could drive a car right onto the tarmac. Ah, those were the days, before everybody got up tight. Anyone interested in the history of commercial aviation needs to see this film, it is a 'must'. And it is very entertaining as well. It is not done in a semi-documentary style at all but is entirely done as a dramatic film which incorporates the details of the airport and shows how everything works.

After enjoying the customer care experience arriving at Stansted Airport recently I was reminded of how air travel it's magic and romance in the past sixty years. I'd first saw this film over fifty years ago and a recent showing of it on the excellent Talking Pictures channel has reminded me of what a great film this was. A typical Ealing portmanteau film with several story lines for me as a lifelong plane spotter was to see the location shots at Heathrow with the BOAC Constellations and Stratocrusers on the tarmac was truly magic. and the next time that fly with Easyjet or Ryanair I'll try to imagine that I'm flying first class with BOAC