In that kind of plane, at the speed and low altitude they were flying, you could open the cabin door in flight. Prop planes didn't fly at 35,000 feet like today's passenger jets. This plane was at about 9000 feet and the air pressure isn't significantly different. Of course you had to be extremely careful and it's not something you would ever do other than in an emergency but it could be done. Both writer Ernest K. Gann and director William A. Wellman were pilots. Do you think they'd make such a titanic goof like that if it weren't feasible? Opening a plane's cabin door is also depicted in some other older films about flying, such as Five Came Back and its remake, Back From Eternity.
But the rest of your memory serves you badly I'm afraid, schappe1. There was in fact plenty of wind, though not much turbulence at that point. Wayne stood in the doorway and had to be held by Robert Newton, who in turn was braced well inside the plane. Nor is anyone "walking around beside the open door". In fact, no one goes near the door while Wayne and Newton (Wayne Newton? :)) are by it. Everyone stays well away. And the door is only opened long enough to toss the luggage out. No one had the chance to just walk by it even had they been foolish enough to want to. Once the luggage is gone, they shut the door tight again.
However, you're exactly right about the music. A fantastic score by the great Dimitri Tiomkin, who deservedly won an Oscar for it.
On other aspects raised by various posters....
As poster "chord" pointed out, while inflating the life vests inside the cabin is no longer done because of the dangers he described, it was common practice back in 1954 and so was a correct depiction of such procedures at the time. (You also see this in the 1940 film Foreign Correspondent, where the passengers don life jackets before the plane hits the water and several people do drown in the wreck as a consequence.)
Yes, the engines would have made more noise than is heard in the film, but this is after all a movie. You need to hear the dialogue. Lowering external sounds to hear the actors is common in most films, so there's nothing the least unusual about that here. Anyway, in real life the noise inside the cabin was noticeable but not deafening.
No one went to the bathroom? True. But -- in how many Hollywood movies before the 1970s were people actually shown going to the bathroom? Approximately zero. Not until 1960, when Hitchcock put one in the motel bathroom in Psycho, did a major film even show a toilet. And even Hitch didn't have Janet Leigh use it for anything except flushing away those torn pieces of paper. Frankly, I really don't need to see people going to relieve themselves. But that's just me.
My favorite comment was from poster "mam13143". In complaining about the acting (which was pretty good all around) and dialogue (which was criticized as hokey and clichéd even then), he also wrote, "First it seems to be shot almost entirely on stages". Well, duh! Did he think they were up in a real plane? All in all, considering they were using CinemaScope cameras in a cramped space, the interiors of the plane were very well handled...even if they were just cut-away sections on a sound stage.
This film is overlong and has a few dull patches but overall holds up quite well. Some people seem to expect 2014 attitudes in a 1954 film, which is of course ridiculous. Oddly, most of the criticisms of this movie as a piece of entertainment that you hear today were also voiced when it came out. But it's a solid film.
I just wish the DVD had that missing ten-second part of Jan Sterling's big scene with Paul Kelly in it!
reply
share
lwi101
9 years ago
Without cabin pressurization, they would have to fly below 10,000 feet, due to oxygen requirements, and there would not be a difference between cabin and outside pressure.
In the early 80's I vacationed in Mexico, and took a flight to see the Mayan pyramids. The plane was a old Martin 404, with twin radial engines. Some of the passengers complained about the air conditioning, it was the jungle after all. The cabin crew opened the front and rear doors to get flow through ventilation. We were at about 4,000 ft and it was only a 30 min flight, but still way different from a B767 or an A330! But you could open the doors back in the day.
lou
reply
share
gary-64659
8 years ago
I've always thought it was a great advance in film history to cross that barrier -- show people taking a crap.
reply
share