bellino-angelo2014 I personally disagree with the ones that say that this is bad in the same way as ''The Conqueror''. Sure it's bad, but it more looked a comedy than a war movie.John Wayne plays a US Air Force Colonel that is forced to escort a defecting soviet pilot (Janet Leigh) to Russia, and then all hell breaks loose, and in a funny way. Wayne and Leigh even fall in love, and they share even some nights out. Even when they end in Russia the comedy comes out of nowhere! Paul Fix is the comic relief while Hans Conried did his best with the material he was given.However there was a good thing about this movie (that's why I rated it 7); the nice figther planes and the aerial shots, very ahead of its time (made in 1951, but not released until 1957).

Robert J. Maxwell There aren't as many movies that are so bad that you can enjoy laughing at them. Has anyone ever really sat through "The Conqueror" or "Plan 9 From Outer Space" and ENJOYED them? Easier said than done.The photography here is by Winton Hoch, a former chemist, and it's magnificent, in the air or on the ground. There are impressive shots of colorful airplanes doing sinuous leaps across a sparkling blue sky. The scenes were shot in the American Southwest, including Edwards Air Force Base, from which I once caught a lift to Rome, New York.John Wayne is an Air Force colonel who get mixed up with Janet Leigh, a Soviet agent posing as a defector. Both are expert jet pilots, although they fly indiscriminately any machine that will lift off the ground. They fall in love and get married. Then Wayne pretends to defect to Russia. On a whim, they both escape from the USSR and return to Palm Springs where they drink champagne and eat huge steaks.Four editors get screen credit for this mish mash. They should all be spanked. The botches are too many to list but I'll mention just one. Janet Leigh, looking supernally beautiful and sensuous, first arrives at the Alaskan Air Force base and Wayne has to search her. She removes her flight suit. (Wow.) Wayne tells her to take off her other clothing in the bathroom. Next shot: Leigh is having a shower behind the curtain and is singing to herself. Next shot: She pokes her head from the bathroom door, remarks how nice it is to have hot water, and asks permission to take a shower. Did I mention how strikingly gorgeous she is? Yes, I think I did.Wayne is his usual casual American self but the role reduces him to two expressions -- first mock irritation, then a smiling acceptance of Leigh's betrayal. Nobody else really counts. But Wayne and Fix are obviously too old for their parts, and Leigh looks about half Wayne's age.The writers must have been on peyote or something. Nothing really makes much sense. Pilots shout loudly to one another on the radio. And they use comic book phrases like, "Here we GO!" After she finagles Wayne into defecting to Russia, the authorities squeeze all the information they can out of him, with Leigh's seductive help. Yet, she pulls a pistol on him, pistol whips him twice across the face. Wayne falls to the floor unconscious while she retrieves some item from his pocket. A dazed Wayne clambers to his feet, still smiling, and they argue about whether they love each other or not. What the hell kind of a scene IS this? But someone -- maybe Howard Hughes himself, the éminence gris behind the whole production -- knew something about flying. The aerobatics are within technical limits. And when you make too tight a turn, your airplane loses speed and spins out.Except for Leigh, whose character is so mixed up as to be indefinable, the Russians are the usual cartoon characters. Their accommodations are terrible. So are their faces, uniforms, and accents.I think there was a three-year time lapse between the shooting of this flick and its release. Maybe that accounts for some of what seem like irregularities in the film, such as the Air Force uniforms. But who knows? I mean, really -- who knows?

MARIO GAUCI Unsurprisingly, this film barely ever crops up in discussions of Josef von Sternberg's work (in retrospect, it comes across as his most impersonal effort): this is perhaps because the subject matter was more suited to someone like Howard Hawks! When it is mentioned, it is as yet another Howard Hughes folly (for what it is worth, Hawks' own collaboration with the notoriously volatile producer on THE OUTLAW {1943} had proved equally disastrous if somewhat more rewarding as a film) or as one of 4 cinematic embarrassments that clouded the career of its legendary star, John Wayne – the others being the Commie-baiting BIG JIM McLAIN (1952), THE CONQUEROR (1956; with "The Duke" a most unlikely Genghis Khan!) and the flag-waving Vietnam War epic THE GREEN BERETS (1968).Though he respected Hughes and looked forward to working with scriptwriter Furthman again, Sternberg was humiliated into being asked to make a directing test before the start of shooting – having been away from film-making for almost a decade, with only a documentary short to his name in the interim and uncredited work on another troubled "Sex Western" as THE OUTLAW was i.e. the David O. Selznick production of DUEL IN THE SUN (1946)! Being also his only official film in color, the director says in his autobiography that he had revolutionary ideas about how this should be approached but, needless to say, he was not allowed to experiment on Hughes' time (and money)! Small wonder, then, that – eerily presaging their subsequent collaboration on MACAO (1952) – he walked away or was replaced (of all people, by Furthman himself…though there is also mention of Nicholas Ray being involved, yet again, in the re-takes!). Incidentally, while shooting was completed in 1950, mysteriously the film took 7 years to finally emerge – the last film to be officially released under Hughes' aegis – by which time, the airline novelties he had hoped to showcase had become obsolete and the studio he owned, RKO, had folded (so that the picture ultimately got released under the Universal banner)! The plot is the typical 'relinquishing of Communist ideals in favor of the Western world's way of life' which not only dated as far back as Ernst Lubitsch's Greta Garbo vehicle NINOTCHKA (1939) but, in the days of the Cold War, invariably produced a host of other comedies on the theme, namely NEVER LET ME GO (1953), THE IRON PETTICOAT (1956), SILK STOCKINGS (1957; actually a musical remake of NINOTCHKA itself) and Billy Wilder's ONE, TWO, THREE (1961; the director having earlier co-scripted that same Lubitsch film). To get back to JET PILOT, the person to go through this cultural switch is young Russian aviatrix Janet Leigh: in true Hughes fashion, she was chosen for her natural attributes more than anything else but, in hindsight, she proves delightfully perky – even involving the usually stoic "Duke" into situations of sexual innuendo that, again, were a Hawksian prerogative and, where Wayne is concerned, would be featured most prominently in his relationship with Angie Dickinson in RIO BRAVO (1959). The hero, of course, is the titular air ace who, in spite of the Commies' flying prowess, is shown to know a trick or two that can still surprise them and incur their envy! Familiar character actor Paul Fix, who is said to have taught Wayne the works of the acting profession and would thus be prominently featured in any number of the star's vehicle, appears here as his sidekick/Second-In-Command (who first attempts to communicate with Leigh in Yiddish!).Well, the narrative takes the formulaic route in that initial antagonism gives way to romance, which then is jeopardized by the discovery that Leigh is really a spy; prior to this, having learned of her imminent deportation, Wayne marries her but, of course, subsequently gives her the cold shoulder. That is, until his C.O. (Jay C. Flippen) is persuaded to have the hero ostensibly defect to Russia in order to provide the Commies with wrong information about American aviation techniques while getting a low-down of where they were themselves at! While Leigh believes Wayne had really turned traitor for her sake, she then discovers his ruse and is about to give him away to her own stern superiors! However, when the latter (an understanding Roland Winters and, for what it is worth, a former Charlie Chan!) is transferred and replaced with the smarmy Hans Conried (a brief but very nice turn), the heroine realizes that the Russians really intend doing away with Wayne, she is all-too-happy to return with her husband to his home country…because, after all, you don't get juicy steaks in the Soviet Union and certainly not like they do them in New York! All in all, JET PILOT (which I had first watched not too long ago on late-night Italian TV as a double-bill with the afore-mentioned THE CONQUEROR{!} – both would ultimately be released on DVD as part of Universal's 5-movie set JOHN WAYNE: AN American ICON) is reasonably enjoyable in a 'classic Hollywood' sort of way, despite being itself no such thing; making the viewing that more palatable are the notable contributions of cinematographer Winton C. Hoch (like Wayne himself, a John Ford regular) and composer Bronislau Kaper.

ceres perdue I saw this film in the early 80s when I was in art school. I was transfixed. The flying grabbed me so hard that when I went home that night, I was pretending that my wheezy 1966 VW bug was a jet doing arabesques in the sky, which may have made for some odd looking driving. Maybe this is a film you have to see on a screen rather than on TV, but for me the flying WAS the movie. The rest was just an excuse to hang it together and promote an audience.Perhaps I should add that my dad was a pilot and when I was three, he took me up and did corkscrews and dives and flew upside down and I loved it, I was sworn to secrecy to never tell my mother who had made him quit being a crop duster because I was on the way. No roller-coaster has ever lived up to it and all my flying since then has been conventional. However, I found later from my fellow students that few of them drove home in a normal way that night.