Strategic Air Command

Anthony Mann: Strategic Air Command (US 1954) with James Stewart as Robert "Dutch" Holland. Photo: La Cinémathèque française.

Strategic Air Command (France) / Ilmojen kiitäjät / Luftens jättar.

Anthony Mann

États-Unis / 1954 / 114 min / 16 mm / VOSTF

Avec James Stewart, June Allyson, Frank Lovejoy.

Helsinki premiere: 18 Nov 1955 Joukola, Kino-Palatsi - released by Paramount Pictures.

Copie 16 mm issue des collections de UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Viewed at La Cinémathèque française, Salle Georges Franju, 51 Rue de Bercy, 75012 Paris, M° Bercy Lignes 14, 6, samedi le 13 avril 2024

La Cinémathèque française : " Au sommet de sa carrière de joueur de baseball, un réserviste de l'armée de l'air est rappelé en pleine Guerre froide aux commandes d'un bombardier. Dernier opus de la collaboration entre Anthony Mann et James Stewart, et le moins connu. "

AA: The James Stewart - Anthony Mann collaboration in 1950-1955 resulted in five Westerns and three non-Westerns. Two were particularly personal for Stewart. Thunder Bay reflected Stewart the oilman, Strategic Air Command revealed Stewart the Air Force fighter.

Stewart's military record was unique for a Hollywood professional. The son of a family with a long military tradition, he possessed both a private pilot certificate and a commercial pilot certificate. In WWII, he fought five years in the U.S. Army Air Corps, reorganized as U.S. Army Air Forces and later as United States Air Force. He interrupted his film career: after Ziegfeld Girl (1941), his next film was It's a Wonderful Life (1946). 

Several films reflected Stewart's flying passion, including No Highway in the Sky (1951), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and Airport ´77 (1977). Let's also remember the role of the Major Glenn Miller Army Air Forces Orchestra as the forerunner of US military big bands and its tragedy in The Glenn Miller Story (1954).

The distinction of Strategic Air Command is in its semi-documentary and "military procedural" approach. It is about the dangerous profession of the men in the air force. It's hard work and little pay. It is the driest of the Stewart-Mann movies.

In real life, Stewart was a true war hero. As a film star, he was the opposite of heroic posturing. He was not afraid of showing vulnerability. He processed agony, torment, pain and suffering. He was able to portray a loser, an invalid, an alcoholic, a mental patient and a suicide candidate. In Strategic Air Command, his character Robert "Dutch" Holland injures his left arm in a crash landing in Greenland, making him permanently invalid and unfit to fly.

Strategic Air Command was Stewart's third movie with June Allyson, here playing a long-suffering military wife, with a newborn baby. It is also one of Stewart's vehicles exposing his character's authoritarian and patriarchal streak. (In Hitchcock's films, The Man Who Knew Too Much, co-starring Doris Day, explored this.). 

Strategic Air Command is a Cold War film like A Dandy in Aspic. Like The Heroes of Telemark, it is a Nuclear Age film, but this time in glorification of the nuclear arms race. It is about the development and testing of nuclear age bombers, including in a thrilling sequence involving mid-air fueling.

The master cinematographer is William Daniels. In charge of the aerial photography was Tom Tutwiler whose aerial film credits also included Blaze of Noon, The Bridges of Toko-Ri, The Spirit of St. Louis and The Hunters. The documentary accuracy is fascinating, the composition is magnificent and the danger and excitement feel authentic.

Strategic Air Command was the second VistaVision release. On a curved screen, shots of the B-36 "caught in majestic solitude against the sky brought awed gasps and wild applause" from the audience. For the New York premiere, the largest motion picture screen in the world was installed. In Paris, it was possible to experience real VistaVision in the Paramount cinema.

That's where André Bazin went to see Strategic Air Command, the newest film by one of his favourite directors. CinemaScope was essential in Bazin's aesthetics, and he was interested in VistaVision's capability of solving CinemaScope's biggest flaw: the blur (le flou). Bazin recognized that the definition on traditional screens was superior to CinemaScope. VistaVision solved the problem of the blur. Bazin was gratified with the technical achievement.

As for the film, Bazin found it one of the most boring brought to us by America since The Robe. "It is irritating that a new procedure must always be applied to the most stupid scenarios". "But if you are as bored as I, you can as a distraction count James Stewart's gray hair or train your eyes to the different textures in civil and military costumes". (André Bazin : "Strategic Air Command. Cinéma en piqué", Le Parisien Libéré, N° 3447, 11 octobre 1955)

On display was "Copie 16 mm issue des collections de UCLA Film & Television Archive." It is not a good 16 mm print. The ratio is Academy. The spectacle of grandeur is left to the imagination. The image is duped with a dark bias. There is a studio echo in the sound. The heroic Victor Young score sounds great.