One of the highlights of the second TCM Classic Film Festival was the first fully sanctioned screening of Clarence Brown’s “Night Flight” (1933) since MGM’s rights to Antoine de Saint Exupery’s novel about air mail pilots lapsed in 1942 (he disappeared over the English Channel in World War II two years later).
“It doesn’t really quite work, but its a really interesting movie,” TCM host Robert Osborne said in his introduction on Sunday morning, wisely trying to lower the sold-out audience’s sky-high expectations. “Even if it’s not a good movie, its important for us movie buffs. You can’t have a movie with John and Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Helen Hayes, Robert Montgomery and Mryna Loy and not look at it.”
This star-filled David O. Selznick production may not be a full-blown classic like the festival’s other big rediscovery “The Constant Nymph”– or the film it is most likely to be unfavorably compared to, Howard Hawks’ similar “Only Angels Have Wings.” But it’s still a highly watchable all-star epic in haute MGM style. There’s some spectacular aerial footage (not faked like in “Angels”) and Gable comes off very well in a mostly non-speaking role of a pilot who runs into a storm while crossing the Andes. He has no scenes with Helen Hayes, who chews a bit of scenery as his increasingly concerned wife as Brown (a pilot himself) ratchets up the tension.
Most of the dramatic heavy lifting is done by John Barrymore as the ruthless managing director of the Buenos Aires-based airline who is all too willing to risk his men’s lives to establish air mail service across South America. Most of his scenes are with Lionel Barrymore, who uses every acting trick at his disposal to upstage his real-life younger brother as his more humane second in command.
“He can’t steal the scene from me because he has no dialogue,” Osborne quoted John Barrymore as telling Brown about Lionel at one point. “I bet you $10 he steals the scene from you,” Brown replied. And so he does.
Montgomery has a smaller part, cast to type as a playboy pilot who takes off in evening clothes under his flight suit, and Loy, looking quite glamorous, is seen briefly as the wife of pilot William Gargan. The film, advertised as a followup to “Grand Hotel” and “Dinner at Eight,” fared poorly at the box office, reportedly because the big stars had relatively little interaction with one another.
Selznick was preoccupied at the time with the troubled production of “Viva Villa” (started by Howard Hawks and completed by Jack Conway after most Mexican location footage was destroyed in a plane crash). When “Night Flight” was nearly completed, he discovered there was little action in St. Exupery’s philosophical novel and brought in additional writers (the adaptation is credited solely to one of his favorites, Oliver H.P. Garrett) to add a subplot about polio serum being flown over the Andes to save a little boy’s life that frames the movie. This device turns up again in another Selznick production six years later, John Cromwell’s “Made for Each Other” with James Stewart and Carole Lombard.
After the film, Osborne brought out Drew Barrymore, granddaughter of John B. and grand-niece of Lionel, for a chat.
“I’m so proud when anyone talks about my family,” she said, describing watching the Barrymore film legacy (including great-aunt Ethel) “It’s like a metaphorical treasure hunt. The way they look, the way they they behave — I look at myself and well, obviously. I feel a deep connection.”
The younger Barrymore said her favorite film of her grandfather’s was the Hawks’ comedy classic “Twentieth Century” — “I just love his performance in that film. Now that I’m director myself, I study ikd films even more voraciously. This is no lie. I have TCM on my television at all times. What you do is so impportant. For people who love and worship film it is a temple.”
Osborne said the rights to “Night Flight” were finally fully cleared and it would be showing on TCM in the future. This long-overdue addition to the classic film library will arrive on DVD at retail on June 7 from Warner Home Video.
