jacobs-greenwood Directed by Michael Curtiz, with a screenplay co-written by Norman Reilly Raine, this average war drama is credited with being James Cagney's first Technicolor film. In fact, one of the first things I noticed, besides Brenda Marshall's beauty, was seeing Cagney, Dennis Morgan, Alan Hale, and George Tobias in color! Reginald Gardiner also appears, though more prominently in the latter half of the film.It's a story about Canadian bush pilots who compete for jobs with one another until they are (more or less) "forced" to work together. Eventually, war breaks out and, inspired by a radio broadcast of Winston Churchill's brave words ("We will never surrender!"), the pilots decide to enlist to join the conflict. There's a love triangle between Cagney, Morgan, and Marshall to be resolved and the film's final 30-40 minutes, supplemented with lots of aerial stock footage of military aircraft et al, is war related. The film received Oscar nominations for Color Cinematography and Art Direction-Interior Decoration; its special effects are laughable by today's standards.A mysterious bush pilot named MacLean is "stealing" all the work and undercutting the fares typically paid for job after job normally performed by Johnny Dutton (Morgan), "Tiny" Murphy (Hale), Blimp Lebec (Tobias), and Scrounger Harris (Gardiner). Of course, Brian MacLean is played by Cagney, who meets and sweeps Dutton's fiancée Emily Foster (Marshall) right off her feet. J. M. Kerrigan plays Emily's father, a storekeeper. Later, MacLean causes the three to (at least partially) wreck their planes when they try to force him down to show displeasure for his actions. But when MacLean gets hurt, hit on the head with his own prop and rescued (pulled out of the water) by Emily, Dutton flies through fog and risks his life landing at night to retrieve a doctor (J. Farrell MacDonald) for him.This begins an agreement, more than a friendship, between Dutton, Tiny, and MacLean which leads them to work together throughout the Winter off-season transporting supplies for a string of mines (run by Charles Halton). Flying explosives in perilous conditions causes the men to draw closer such that MacLean, concerned that Dutton's return to marry Emily will cause his financial ruin, beats him to the punch. Without explaining himself to anyone else, MacLean returns first to take Emily to Ottawa with his bankroll where he weds her to keep her from destroying Dutton's plans to start an airline. Upon learning this from Emily's father, Dutton goes to Ottawa where he learns what's happened, punches out MacLean (who doesn't really defend himself), and then gives his $4,000 to charity before disappearing. Charles Smith plays a bellboy, uncredited, at the hotel in Ottawa.Unbeknownst to the others, Dutton is the first to hear the call of military service, and joins its ranks. Meeting up back home with Tiny, Lebec and Scrounger, MacLean and company hear the aforementioned inspirational radio broadcast from Winston Churchill (Miles Mander, uncredited) and decide that the Canadian Air National Guard needs their help. Willie Fung plays the café owner. The four bush pilots fly their planes confidently onto the military base thinking their services are invaluable only to later find out that, despite their vastly superior flying hours, they're too old for combat. They are told that their age makes them susceptible to blacking out during high-G force maneuvers, but that their skills are needed as instructors.Reginald Denny plays the officer in charge; Gig Young plays one of the student pilots; George Meeker appears briefly in a club scene. MacLean finds that Dutton is his commanding officer and must deal with that, in addition to being told that he won't be able to fight in the war. There are incidents of insubordination, including MacLean and Tiny buzzing Air Marshall W. A. Bishop himself, before tragedy and, eventually, acts of heroism follow. Dutton also learns the truth about MacLean with regards to Emily, which enables the film's final act.

Robert J. Maxwell There are few surprises here but they aren't really needed. In fact, we might be shocked if any genuine innovation appeared in a 1942 Warners flag-waving adventure about a small gang of Canadian bush pilots who join the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. No, this fits the template in a way that satisfies and uplifts. In a changing and often disappointing universe we can always depend on director Michael Curtiz and his studio to deliver the reassuring goods.Half a dozen bush pilots fly around in the lake country transporting supplies to isolated settlements. The pilots include some familiar names -- the handsome Dennis Morgan, the comic George Tobias, the avuncular and not overly bright Alan Hale. James Cagney brings his own float plane into this milieu and begins to undercut everyone else's business. On top of that, he marries Morgan's girl friend, Brenda Marshall, simply to keep Morgan from ruining his plans to establish his own airport. Morgan would fail if he hooked up with the flighty and impulsive Marshall. Just a pal looking out for his buddy. Actually I'm not too sure that Cagney, with his New York cockiness, fits too well into this picture of rural Canadian types. He overcomes any weaknesses, though, by dint of the application of sheer skill. He's so graceful, so bouncy, in speech and manner. When he's knocked cold by a spinning propeller he practically does an entre chat before he collapses.The friendships and rivalries come to a head when war is declared and they all join the RCAF. Hale is rejected for being too old. Cagney's daredevil style during training gets him cashiered, but there is the usual climactic expiation.In addition to the easily grasped plot and the headlong pace, there are some dazzling shots of airplanes in flight. The skies are royal blue, the fir forests are veridian, and the scattered fair-weather cumulus clouds are puffs of cotton. Makes one want to take to the air. Well, makes SOME of us want to take to the air anyway. Others of us are guided by the maxim that what goes up must come down, without any specifics about exactly how the descent is achieved. The model work is of the period and not very convincing but who cares? It zips along enjoyably at a riotous pace.

downspout The comments of earlier folks were appreciated .As a Canadian viewer I too appreciated it's accurate parts.And I also thought that Jimmies New Yawk accent was funny for a Canadian .The sentiment was great and the overall picture was good for the times .In the scene in a pub where the boys sang "Bless Them All" and two of them lamented being rejected from flight school , it was interesting to note (along with the wonderful nostalgia throughout)the long necked beer bottles they drank from.We old timers knew that they were the originals,before stubby bottles. I say this after recently hearing young people refer to the fact that there used to be stubby beer bottles before the present long neck bottles .Or ,was that only here in B.C.?Thanks to one commenter for the aircraft info too . And another , for the location of the lake .

Gavno Even tho it's pretty much of a "formula" movie, CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS is GREAT fun, and one of my favorite Cagney films. It truth, it's a lot more than that in film history, in addition to having some very intriguing legal ramifications. It contains things that appeal to a wide audience on many levels.For the airplane nuts out there this one is NOT TO BE MISSED! Many of the aircraft are types that have no other screen exposure, and which today are museum pieces... if examples of them still exist at all. The roster of military and civilian planes makes you DROOL... Tiger Moths (used as RCAF primary flight trainers), AT-6 Texans / Harvards, Lockheed Hudsons, Lysanders (as bush planes), and the most interesting of all... a now EXTREMELY RARE Hawker Hurricane, wearing Nazi markings and playing the part of a Messerschmidt! I suppose the Hayes Office censors kept the script writers from calling it a Fokker, just because THIS cast of reprobates was a wild and crazy enough crew to use that name to try to slip through a few double ententes! Besides Cagney, the cast is PURE Warner Brothers stock players. Alan Hale always turned in a good performance, and he does it here too as bush pilot Francis Patrick "Tiny" Murphy. Comedic actor Reginald Gardener turns in an excellent, low key performance as "Scrounger", but his subtle comedy is totally upstaged by George Tobias as "Blimp" Lebec, using an absurd mustasche, outrageous costume, and the most outrageous and overblown French Canadian accent ever seen on film! The story is a combination of wartime flag waver and fairly standard period drama, along with a dash of Saturday afternoon at the movies pot boiler serial thrown in; the final sequence with Cagney versus the Nazi fighter is PURE Hollywood schmaltz, but it's a load of fun.CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS, and the similarly themed A YANK IN THE RAF (Tyrone Power) were the prototypes that set the stage for a hundred other wartime flag wavers yet to come. CAPTAINS was walking into new and unique territory; in theory anyway, Cagney, Hale, Tobias, and every other American involved in the production could have been tried for sedition and imprisoned... oddly enough, for purely patriotic reasons.At the time CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS was filmed, World War 2 was already in progress with the United States remaining on the sidelines as a neutral. Canada, being part of the British Commonwealth, provided assistance to embattled England. Under the terms of the US Neutrality Act, as a combatant Canada was NOT our ally. The provisions of the Act forbade Americans from lending material assistance to Canada, and CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS fell into the category of providing propaganda for use by a belligerent nation! According to some sources, the cast and crew were a bit nervous when they crossed the border to return to the United States at the end of filming; the possibility existed that they'd be arrested by Federal agents.This odd state of political affairs was shown significantly in A YANK IN THE RAF. An early sequence shows American airplanes being provided to Canada by the simple expedient of landing them at the Canadian border, and everyone involved just ignores it as the planes, sans pilots, are pulled away by a stout rope extending across the border into Canada! Such tactics really were employed in the days before Pearl Harbor.In any case... CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS provides it's share of Hollywood ballyhoo too with one of the most campy musical numbers ever made for a movie. In a Canadian nightclub, a male chorus of singing waiters belt out the title song, while cigarette girls in quasi military costume (complete with wings across their blouses) provide a dancing floor show! It's a HOOT!!!In any event... CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS is a snapshot of a simpler time when war wasn't such a contentious matter and the lines between right and wrong were much simpler. It's a good way to spend a couple of hours.Even if I wasn't such a rabid Cagney fan, I'd still give this one a Thumbs Up!