Night Flight 1933

     This film is based on a novel by French writer and pioneering aviator Antonine de Saint-Exupery.  The film covers a 24 hour period featuring the operations of the fictional airline Trans-Andean European Air Mail.  Polio breaks out in Rio de Janeiro.  The serum is in Santiago and the only way to get the medicine to the hospital is by plane.  Pilots must risk the treacherous weather and the peaks of the Andes during their flights.  A little girl is waiting for the medicine to arrive before she becomes even more sick.  Her mother is very worried about the medicine getting to the hospital in time to help her daughter.  She could die or become crippled if the medicine doesn’t arrive in time!
     This film has a many stars as the actors.  There is a LOT of talk at this time about the night flights being pulled back because too many disasters give aviation a bad name.  The people manning the radios are trying to keep track of where the planes are and where the storms are located.  The biplanes are crude and they are basically giant kites with motors and propellers.  It’s not clear just how much control the pilots has over the planes?  They are flying using the primitive instruments and relying on the dashboard gauges to determine where the plane is without being able to see where they are.  3 1/2* (I liked this movie)
 
84 min, Drama directed by Clarence Brown with John Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, William Gargan, C. Henry Gordon, Leslie Fenton, Harry Beresford, Frank Conroy, Dorothy Burgess, Irving Pichel, Helen Jerome Eddy, Buster Phelps.

Note:  Imdb 6.2 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 33% audience, Amazon 4* out of 5* with 29 ratings (32% 5*, 40% 4*, 19% 3*, 8% 2*, Letterboxd average 3* out of 5*, www.dvdtalk.com Movie Good +, Video Excellent, Sound, Excellent.

Special Note:  Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery based his novel on his personal experiences while fling on South American mail routes.  There was a dispute between MGM and Saint Exupery and the re-release was delayed until 2011 after legal obstacles were overcome.  Saint-Exupery is also the author of the popular novella The Little Prince first published in April 1943.