Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 163: Up, Up and Away

Another day, another war film however at least this one takes things from the soldiers on foot to those up in the air as we join the men looking to go Twelve o'clock High. Henry King's film centres on the 918th Heavy Bombardment Group known as a 'hard luck group' to most as they often suffer fatalities and very few missions see all the men from this squadron return back safely. A lot of the blame for this can be centred on their commander Keith Davenport who is too personal with his team and has driven himself crazy with worry so those in charge believe that he needs to be replaced. They eventually decide that his replacement should be his friend Frank Savage a more level-headed gent who has been working a desk job up to this point in the war. Savage initially alienates most of the company as he chastises them for not carrying out proper security checks, wearing the wrong uniform and generally having a bad attitude. Just before most of the company are about to ask for transfers he is advised by Major Stovall, played by Dean Jagger who won a Best Supporting Actor award for his role, to try and draft in a young pilot and he does this by bringing in Jesse Bishop. Soon the group warm to Savage but like Davenport he starts to go a bit bonkers as the war begins to be fought more and more in the air and it is the task of those around him to try and keep him sane.

For a film set during the war and about flying squads, 12 o'clock High doesn't half feature a lot of men talking in rooms so much so that if it was made today you would've thought Aaron Sorkin had written in it. Of course all the procedural dialogue is important in order for the audience to know how and why the powers-that-be have chosen Savage as a replacement for Davenport but it drags down the first half an hour or so of the film. The film really starts getting going when Gregory Peck takes the helm and his performance as the initially by-the-book Savage is the greatest strength of Twelve o'clock High. He is ably assisted by Dean Jagger who gives a great performance as the former lawyer Stovall who becomes Savage's greatest ally and indeed is the person who is featured first and last in this film while I'm not sure if this was an Oscar-worthy role it is certainly a memorable one in terms of the film's ensemble cast. The most spectacular scenes are those when we are allowed up in the air with the squadron as they try and take down the superior Luftwaffe. This is also a very patriotic film as we see a German radio station mocking the bad luck squadron and the film ends with a celebration of everything these men fought for only several years prior. So an uneven film which really gets going once Peck emerges as the star and we are able to enjoy some spectacular aerial sequences but one that perhaps relies too much on patriotic feelings to get its point across.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 161: Sour Krauts

It's interesting to watch some of these films from the late 1940s and early 1950s as the subject of the Second World War starts to produce more interesting ideas. A case in point is Decision Before Dawn a film which focuses on the closing year of the conflict when the majority of Germans had resigned to the fact that they had lost the war. It follows a group of American soldiers who recruit German prisoners of war to spy on their former allies in order to escape their camps. One of the latest recruits is a young soldier simply known as 'Happy' whose friend was killed by other prisoners of wars for spouting his ideas about the war. Happy is chosen to go on a mission with the team along with 'Tiger' a cynical man who the Americans distrust because he came back without his partner while the American chosen to go with them is Rennick one of the allies who doesn't agree with teaming up with Germans. We then see most of the mission through the eyes of Happy as he sees the differing attitudes of his countrymen at the tail end of the war with some surrendering to their ultimate fate and some still feeling patriotic. Happy then is able to infiltrate himself safely into the fold by making friends with a commander but also sees what could possibly happen to him when another deserter is executed. With Happy meeting up with Rennick and Tiger they still face adversity going back to the camp as the Germans start to cotton on to their plan.

Decision Before Dawn is a film that I struggled with but one that had its merits which was mainly creating an amount of peril throughout Happy's mission. The initial set-up of introducing the idea of what the Germans and the Americans are trying to accomplish was a little bit slapdash and I didn't understand it right off the bat but then things got interesting once the three set off. I liked the fact that there was dissension in the ranks between Tiger and Rennick and also the fact that this wasn't the main story instead it was the morally torn Happy who got the bulk of the work. To his credit Oskar Werner was able to carry the film and did a good job in an interesting role with his facial expressions speaking bundles about what Happy was going through. The only other cast member who really had an impact on me was O.E. Hasse as the brutal commander Oberst Von Ecker who was a great German villain. The other thing that impressed me were the effects and at times I really did feel that these three men were in genuine peril with bombs going off all around them and the final tense scenes were real edge-of-your-seat stuff. The main problem I had was that most of it was fairly forgettable and in terms of its place on the Oscar nominations list it almost scenes like a last minute pick as it doesn't seem to have nearly as many nods as its competitors. So Decision Before Dawn is a solid Second World War movie but there isn't a lot to mark it out from a lot of the other films based around this conflict.