When Sydney Box took over Gainsborough he was less into melodrama, more into ripped from the headlines. This airplane disaster movie is based on a real life incident where a plane crashed in the Alps.
It's a British plane, with Phyllis Calvert ideally cast as the stewardess, James Donald as the navigator. There's a film star, an opera singer, a man in the iron lung, a person who was in a concentration camp. It's done sensibly and intelligently - to be honest the film probably needed to be crappier to be successful. It needed terrorists, escaped criminals, kids needing insulin, all that stuff - if you want to make these sort of movies you've got to go the whole hog. I remember when Rank tried to make sensible versions of Gainsborough melodrama and they couldn't pull it off eg Blanche Fury.
There's some good bits like the man in the iron lung sacrificing himself so the others can use batteries and his girlfriend (Sonia Hale) staggering off into the snow, Oates style. I also liked the opera singer singing for help and there's nice location footage.
There is too much sitting around talking about the meaning of it all and/or things that happened in the past like Calvert's love life. I think the film needed more subplots that took place in the present day. Still it's tight and well done - Ken Annakin was a very reliable director.
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