Jimmy Stewart No Highway in the Sky Movie Review

Manager:  Henry Koster

Starring:  James Stewart, Glynis Johns, Marlene Dietrich, Jack Hawkins, Janette Scott, Ronald Squire, Maurice Denham, Niall MacGinnis, Kenneth More, David Hutcheson

Screenplay:  R.C. Sheriff, Oscar Millard and Alec Coppel, based upon the novel past Nevil Shute

No Highway In The Sky represents one of the more unfortunate examples of life imitating art. Nevil Shute published his novel, No Highway, in 1948, afterwards more than xx years of juggling his writing with a career in engineering; a career that began with the de Haviland Aircraft Co. Ltd, where he was employed equally a estimator, and likewise learned to fly. During the 1920s, Shute was involved in the structure of rigid airships designed past Barnes Wallis, later the man backside the "bouncing bombs", a story told in The Dam Busters. During the 1930s, Shute founded his ain airplane structure company, while during the war years he joined the navy and was involved in weapons design, before his literary reputation got him reassigned equally a war correspondent.

In the postal service-war era, Shute retired from his daytime profession and devoted himself to his writing, with many of his stories drawing upon his years in helmsmanship, a subject that however a passion. The novel No Highway focused upon the still theoretical idea of metallic fatigue. It told the story of a scientist who, convinced of the theory'southward validity, fights to basis a new armada of jet planes in which he perceives a fatal design flaw. No Highway was a disquisitional and a commercial success, and soon optioned for the movies. The movie version of the tale, No Highway In The Heaven, was produced in Britain and released during June of 1951. During the aforementioned menses, the de Haviland Visitor, the same at which Shute had commencement been employed, designed and put into service the de Haviland Comet, the world'southward get-go commercial jet airliner. First tested in 1949, the Comet began commercial service in April of 1951, merely to suffer the starting time in a series of fatal crashes during May of 1953.

The positive side-effect of this tragic situation was the rapid development of such skills as underwater search and recovery, and forensic reconstruction, both of which were employed in an try to determine the cause of the crashes. However, desperate to protect themselves and their company, the de Haviland directors did not wait for the scientific investigation to conclude, but made a public declaration to the effect that their planes had been modified then as to, "Cover every possibility that imagination has suggested every bit a likely cause of the disaster."

Every bit information technology happened, their imagination fell somewhat short of the truth. The Comets resumed service, but for another unexplained crash to see the armada grounded once again. This time the investigation was allowed to proceed to its correct conclusion, and did so with the discovery that metal fatigue was indeed responsible; not quite as Nevil Shute has envisaged, via a flaw in the tailplane, or horizontal stabiliser, but due to the pattern and insertion of the square-shaped windows, where the insertion of rivets made micro-cracks in the fuselage which, in conjunction with the windows' sharp corners, created a crack zone that, after sufficient stress, would requite fashion and initiate explosive decompression. Information technology is for this reason that all planes today take round or oblong windows.

Although information technology does somewhat shift the focus of the novel, which, as was normally the example in Nevil Shute'south novels, has its story told past an observer of the activeness rather than a participant in it, No Highway In The Sky opens with that observer, Dennis Scott (Jack Hawkins, who would accept his ain aeronautical problems six years afterward in Determination Confronting Time), taking up his new position every bit Head of Metallurgy at the Royal Shipping Establishment. While being given a tour of the facility, Scott is puzzled past what he sees in ane of the inquiry hangers: the tail-piece of the RAE's new jet aircraft, the Reindeer, being subjected by extreme vibration stress under the supervision of a solitary, rather unkempt individual who, in response to Scott's inquiries as to what he expects to acquire from this organization, replies brusquely that he expects the airplane's tail to fall off, before scuttling away to hide in his part.

It is rather difficult to know how to react to the delineation of scientists in No Highway In The Sky; whether to exist flattered by the film'due south insistence that all scientists are geniuses, or insulted by its concomitant insistence that they are, as, all psychotic. (All geniuses are, we learn, not just scientists; Tschaikovsky and Molière both accept a slap in passing.) Evidently the possibility that a scientist might just be an ordinary person doing an ordinary job while living an ordinary life never disturbed the thinking of anyone continued with this story. The screenplay offers up a litany of criticisms, all of them delivered with the almost breathtaking thing-of-factness.

While showing Scott effectually, his guide, Major Pearl (Maurice Denham), refers to the RAE'southward enquiry scientists as, "The kind who swallow their porridge with a slide-rule." The Director of the RAE concurs. "A boffin has to be a scrap burbling to exist a boffin," comments Sir John (Ronald Squire), calculation, "The line between genius and just patently crackers is so thin, you never know what side they're on – nor when they've crossed it." Nosotros hear tales of ane particular scientist who started out, "Taking a bathroom in a public fountain", and so progressed to, "Pinching girls in the park" – after which, we gather, he was "pinched" himself.

Of the individual in accuse of the metal fatigue tests, Major Pearl observes, "All boffins are a fleck crackers, simply I suppose he's the worst", and indeed, subsequent events reveal him to exist abrupt, bad-mannered, completely socially dysfunctional, and so absent-minded as to be unable to find the way to his own house – after living in it for eleven years. All this being the case, we are not specially surprised to find that Mr Theodore Dearest, the scientist in question, is being played by Jimmy Stewart, here at his absolute Jimmy Stewart-est.

Probably as a result of this piece of casting, the Theodore Love of the novel was significantly toned downward for the flick version, being shorn of his more extreme traits (including a conventionalities in the occult, which plays a function in the story'due south climax) and unlikeable aspects (in the novel, Honey'south fail of his motherless girl leads to the kid becoming seriously sick). No Highway In The Sky'south Theodore Dearest is far more cuddly, although no try was fabricated to disguise the behavioural quirks that influence his co-workers' opinion of his mental state. Afterwards a close-up look at Honey stumbling helplessly around his disastrously ill-run house, Dennis Scott is sorely tempted to dismiss the scientist's belief in metal fatigue equally nix more than a crackpot notion – except that its mathematical ground seems a picayune likewise sound for comfort.

Scott so encounters an onetime friend, a test pilot, who rages against "airplane pilot mistake" existence blamed for everything that goes wrong in aeronautics, including the contempo crash of a Reindeer. "Harry wouldn't take done that!" he exclaims angrily of the supposed circumstances of that crash.

Increasingly uneasy, Scott looks into the investigation himself, learning that the tailplane wasn't recovered – and that the crash occurred within hours of Honey's theoretical failure signal. Scott takes his concerns to Sir John, who is uncomfortably defenseless betwixt the possible danger to the lives of flying crews and passengers alike, and the disastrous financial consequences to his company should he guild the Reindeers grounded. Sir John decides to reopen the investigation of the Reindeer crash in Labrador, and to initiate some other search for the tailplane, choosing Theodore Love for the job partly considering he's the all-time man for information technology, and partly because, well, it serves him right.

And Theodore Dear being Theodore Beloved, his flying to Canada is well under manner before he notices that the plane he is on is also a Reindeer…

Office of No Highway In The Sky'south drama is Theodore Honey's ain journey from sheltered intellectual to passionate humanitarian; a journeying that, information technology must be said, doesn't entirely fit with the character as conceived past the screenwriters, who seems more likely just not to take idea well-nigh the human lives at pale, rather than have thought of them and dismissed them. "Scientific discipline is in no bustle, Mr Scott; I'm working on a principle," he replies to Scott's need to know why he hasn't pushed his theories more forcefully upon management, adding irritably, "I'grand a scientist – and science is very exacting. It requires the utmost concentration. I can't exist concerned with people."

Simply once upon the Reindeer, Theodore Honey learns that he has been mistaken in himself. Two lives, at least, come to concern him very much, those of pic star Monica Teasdale (Marlene Dietrich), i of whose films he and his wife saw together the dark before Mrs Honey's death in the Rush, and of flight attendant Marjorie Cordner (Glynis Johns), whose kindness and patience he is touched by. To both of these women he confides his theory, pointing out what he believes to be the safest spot in the aeroplane, in the issue of misadventure. (Had this motion-picture show been made in Hollywood at the same time, I rather doubt the men'southward toilets would accept been given such a prominent role!) Prior to this, Honey is given a tour of the cockpit, where he learns to his horror that, after the one that crashed in Labrador, this is the Reindeer with the most flying hours – and that they are apace approaching failure signal.

Confronting the pilot, Samuelson (Niall MacGinnis), Theodore Love battles to make himself understood, insisting that the plane undergo an emergency landing at in one case. This scene is i of the film's best, dramatic and funny all at once, every bit Samuelson tries to make head or tail of Love's frantic and incoherent story while, behind him, the eyes of the listening flight crew abound wider and wider and wider…

It is, nosotros experience, less Honey'due south explanation that finally sways Samuelson than that he is, conspicuously, terrified. Samuelson compromises, radioing back to London for orders, so adopting an air of unconcern that sits very ill below the cold sweat on his brow.

The plane, yet, lands safely in Gander, to Beloved'south cliffhanger – almost to his disappointment. He maintains his conventionalities in his theory notwithstanding. An inspection reveals no fault ("But it wouldn't!" Honey cries in the wilderness), and Samuelson insists on going on – although not with Theodore Dearest on lath. By at present, all the same, "people" take become very much more to the scientist than just abrasive details obscuring a theorem; that he himself will be left backside and therefore be out of danger means nothing to Beloved, who is moved to brand one last desperate effort to protect the lives of those about to re-lath the Reindeer. Forcing his way back into the cockpit, Honey yanks on the lever decision-making the landing-gear, and sends the body of the airliner crashing to the tarmac.

Theodore Dear returns to England – in an RAF fighter, after the commercial airlines all pass up to touch him – to detect himself the middle of a media firestorm. Every bit for his employers, they are caught in a painful bind, still willing to back Honey, if simply they could find something, annihilation, to back up his theory; but that missing tailplane however hasn't been constitute, although Sir John dispatches still another team to Labrador in search of information technology; while in the laboratory, Honey's own experimental tailplane remains stubbornly intact, well past the projected failure point.

An inquiry begins, which rapidly turns into something else: a competency hearing; because if there is one matter that everyone recognises, from the representatives of British Aviation, through Sir John and Dennis Scott, to Monica Teasdale and Marjorie Cordner, both passionate in their conventionalities in Theodore Love – although the human rather than the mathematician – it is how tempting information technology is, how simple, how comforting it would be, just to lock Honey up and throw away the key. He is, after all, a scientist – and therefore by definition of unsound mind…

Autonomously from its cinematic virtues, which are plentiful, No Highway In The Heaven is a look back at time long gone; the dawn of commercial aviation, earlier flying became a form of mass transit; when passengers were few, and planes spacious; when they had a lounge and a kitchen; when meals and drinks were free as a matter of course, and served using real crockery and glassware. The picture show itself is a fine piece of work (also as the product of some other era long gone), using its central dilemmas, the larger trouble of potential air disasters and the personal battle of Theodore Dearest, to build a dramatic and suspenseful work; although typically, with a leavening of humour that supports rather than undercuts the drama. And if most of that sense of humor is at the expense of the scientific profession, well, that's just the price that some of u.s. have to pay for our entertainment.

While this motion picture is naturally dominated by James Stewart'due south central performance, he is very well supported by those around him. Marlene Dietrich, although plainly cast for proper name appeal and American sales, really makes something of what could have been a lazy cheque-book role every bit Monica Teasdale. She is well-matched by Glynis Johns equally Marjorie, who has every protective, indeed, maternal instinct in her body brought out by Thoeodore Honey and his helplessness. The two women, although ranged on the aforementioned side, notice themselves in the eye of—well, you tin't really call information technology a catfight; or if information technology is a catfight, it is the almost polite, the most ladylike, the most mutually sympathetic one imaginable.

Similar so many British films of this era, No Highway In The Sky is a showcase for a splendid collection of graphic symbol actors, including, autonomously from those already mentioned, Kenneth More than every bit the Reindeer's co-airplane pilot, Wilfrid Hyde-White as a crash investigator, Elizabeth Allan equally Mrs Scott (almost twenty years after she and Jack Hawkins co-starred in The Lodger), and as Love'southward daughter, Elspeth, a twelve year former Janette Scott.

The film's treatment of Elspeth is, shall we say, rather divisive. Character after character reacts to her purely intellectual upbringing with horror; Monica and Marjorie jointly prescribe a course of party dresses, makeup, and "telling her she'southward pretty" (and how nice to be in filmdom, where that always is the instance); only personally, I've  never been able to expect at Elspeth's home life, running tame in a household with books on all subjects stacked to the ceiling, conducting behavioural experiments on her pet goldfish, and passing her evenings playing bizarre homemade games based upon cabalistic knowledge, without experiencing a pang of severe envy. At her historic period, that's exactly what I would take liked best…and to meet it presented as, effectively, a form of child corruption is more than a fiddling hurtful.

Jimmy in his lab.

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Source: https://andyoucallyourselfascientist.com/2016/06/07/no-highway-in-the-sky-1951/

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