27 Replies to “The Flight Of The Phoenix 1965”

  7. Hardy Kruger came from a Natzi family , joined the Hitler youth then the SS. He was ordered to execute American prisoners . He refused and was sentenced to death but his officer spoke highly of him and he was reprieved. He then deserted and became a pacifist.

  8. Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,
    In your eyes I have read
    That to be enthroned is to be enslaved,
    And to be understood is to be leveled down,
    And to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullness
    And like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.

  9. A couple of bits of trivia:
    Elleston Trevor, the author of the book, was prolific, writing under eight different names.
    He was also a flight engineer in the RAF during the war. He died in Pheonix, Arizona.
    The (stand in) stunt pilot of the Tallmantz Phoenix P-1, one of the planes used in the movie, died during filming. It's well worth looking him up on wiki.
    As an aside, it might be worth mentioning that the period was the mid-1960's and the author, as well as a number of the actors, were British. Also, the writer, and most of those involved, would have been in the military during WW2. So there are themes that would have resonnated more back then than they do now.
    This was made the same year as The Hill and a few years after The Long And The Tall And The Short.
    National Service (conscription) ended in 1960 with personel not being fully released until 1963. The British Empire was in it's final days (informing some of the casual racism of Ratbags) and Britain had (still has to some extent) a class sytem with officers often coming from the higher classes. Hence the interactions between Peter Finch and Ronald Fraser (who calls him toffee-nosed, i.e. someone who looks down on you). The fact that Heinrich Dorfmann is German pulls in a lot of WW2 shadows that again would have resonated more back then than now. So many subtle things going on. I wonder if Trucker Cobb (Borgnine) may be a reflexion on WW2 PTSD. Although the main theme is the conflict between Towns and Dorfmann (the older man and the cold scientific future) resolved with mutual grudging respect (a familiar theme) there is a lot more going on.

  12. This movie is significantly overlength, I don't care that it's 2 hours but there's so much unnecessary drama in there. I'm really looking forward to watching the 2004 remake because the story in itself is compelling. I want to be camp Frank, but he's such a massive Blockhead for no reason whatsoever (at some point he even admits to that). I know it's a film about egos clashing but there's just nothing to clash about. Nobody's been coming up with any other strategy and the movie isn't conveying that there's any chances of survival otherwise.
    They don't even have to endure eachothers for months and have plenty of space to go out of their ways. And then there's newsboy cap who's just annoying for the sake of it.

  15. Back in the 70s we discussed Pantheon directors. As I recall, Robert Aldrich was in the far side of paradise. 50 years later, looking at his body of work, hits that far outnumber misses, how he moved with changing time; lets put him in the pantheon. I love how his last film was an entertaining valentine to women's wrestling. Wiki hIm, his personal story and his work. Also on YT, Too Late The Hero, Kiss Me deadly,

  16. A great movie, but its theme hides an equally great deception. As a Defense Engineer this is an interesting film for me containing an important warning, "Ignore practical experience at your peril." Frank (Jimmy Stewart) a Veteran pilot declares the plane will kill all of them. This I think is even more prophetic because Jimmy Stewart was a highly experienced pilot in real life. The films main theme is as Frank declares: "little men with slide rules and computers will inherit the earth" – in some respects an accurate prediction. This is the films chilling result as the cold, calculating (inhuman) German model airplane engineer (a 1965 substitute for HAL) proves Frank wrong – cold calculation and technology defeat human experience. The problem is this is a real world lie. On the last day of filming the plane killed the stunt pilot Paul Mantz and would have killed all aboard. They never would have made it out of the desert – even a professionally constructed theme aircraft for the film killed everyone onboard. Frank was right, his experience told him that a crudely constructed 2000 hp monoplane designed by a model airplane designer assembled in the desert would kill everyone – it did. The lesson, as I have learned in my own work is that experience, and practical observation is an enormous factor in successful Engineering and technical success. Ignore it at your peril. Listen to Frank. Viewed in this light and understanding that technology failed in this film rather than succeeded makes this a great film, making many of the same points regarding technology as Kubrick's 2001 Space Odyssey. I think the film maker should have realized this and added 7 more crosses in the sand.

    I do realize that in 1967 the Civil Aeronautics Board insinuated alcohol killed Paul Mantz – the actual crash circumstances are not known to anyone but Mantz.

  22. My second time watching This Movie, I enjoyed this video even more this time around, what A GREAT GREAT Movie, Classical Actings all around. 5 ?☮️.

  27. Thank you for uploading this classic epic! The psychological tension captured between James Stewart's character and the doubted German aircraft model maker is simply spell biding.

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