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Opening on a crushed swastika and closing on an erect telescope, the aeronautic Prometheus. "Came to a sticky end, didn't he?" The aircraft tycoon (Ralph Richardson) aims to smash through that "great wall in the sky," if that means sacrificing family members then so be it. His son (Denholm Elliott) crashes during practice, his daughter (Ann Todd) marries the RAF pilot (Nigel Patrick) who takes over experimental testing. (The couple's romantic flight visualizes the meeting of the ancient and the modern—airborne husband and wife kiss with oxygen masks, under them the Parthenon and the Sphinx quake.) A cosmic pose, "the process of continuous creation," an obsession to unite conqueror and researcher, "it's just got to be done." Hawks-Wellman material, chilled and distended for David Lean's covert self-portrait of the implacable visionary and his human wreckage. Faith of science, thunder of turbines, deathtrap of progress. "How do you like our new toy?" The flier's plunge is a button on the control room, the camera pans across the field and cranes up to reveal the smoking crater before dissolving to the pregnant widow's impassive face at a jaunty movie theater. (The capper has his scream recorded and echoing in the darkened hangar.) Cozy fields with whooshing jets above, the replacement pilot (John Justin) steps up in the tradition of Stiff Upper Lips at their most expressive behind visors in rattling cockpits. Terence Rattigan script, Vincent Korda sets, lively competition from Dwan's The Wild Blue Yonder on the other side of the Atlantic. "A whole new world," promises the technocrat chasing the supersonic phoenix, and from there to 2001: A Space Odyssey is Kubrick's secret. With Dinah Sheridan, Joseph Tomelty, Jack Allen, and Ralph Michael. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |