Reeling Backward: "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines; Or, How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 hours 11 minutes" (1965)

"Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" is a lark, a piffle, a reminder that big-budget movie-making for pure entertainment existed long before the blockbuster era. It is probably as well remembered today for its period-authentic aircraft as it is for the charmingly goofy theme song, which was released as a hit single.

"Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.
They Go Up, Tiddly, Up, Up.
They Go Down, Tiddly, Down, Down."

Featuring a bunch of no-names with a few midlevel stars as bait -- Benny Hill and Red Skelton make cameos -- the film is set in 1910 and is about a fictional air race from London to Paris sponsored by a newspaper magnate who's keen on aviation. The idea was to show people that this crazy notion of humans flying through the air was something that could be safe and reliable as transportation.

Of course, more planes crash than make it to the finish line. Though, in the miraculous way of film comedies, nobody is ever seriously hurt.

I've always been fascinated by this era of flying. Just a few years after these contraptions were cobbled together, often by amateur enthusiasts working in barns and garages, they would be deployed as serious machines of war. Soon after World War I ended, commercial flying took off, and suddenly the world became a much smaller place.

Director Ken Annakin, who co-wrote the script with Jack Davies, was a flying nut himself and committed to making the planes and stunts as real -- or at least real-looking -- as possible. They built a lot of aircraft using vintage blueprints, or mocked up their own. The result is the movie acts as something of a time capsule, showing us what nascent aviation looked like.

Annakin was a busy filmmaker who specialized in popular fare, including a bunch of stuff for Disney, but also tackled big-budget war dramas like "The Longest Day" and "Battle of the Bulge." He actively made feature films from the 1940s through the 1990s, and even had a Genghis Khan biopic come out a year after his death in 2009.

(Annakin is an old Anglo-Saxon surname, so I doubt George Lucas named his "Star Wars" central character after the filmmaker, which was my first thought.)

Competitors arrive from all over the globe with all sorts of zany machines to fly. The Japanese pilot (Yujiro Ishihara) is considered the favorite, based on his highly advanced yellow biplane.

But he's felled -- along with several others -- by the machinations of Sir Percy Ware-Armitage (Terry-Thomas), a snobby and extravagantly mustachioed nobleman who sees sabotaging the aircraft of his competition as key to his winning strategy.  He even pays some seamen to ferry his wobbly plane across the English Channel aboard their ship, then pretend he flew the whole way. Not unlike some modern marathon runners pulling similar tricks.

James Fox plays Richard Mays, a stiff British officer who also is wooing the daughter of Lord Rawnsley (Robert Morley), the man whose newspaper is sponsoring the race. Sarah Miles is Patricia, the daring young proto-feminist, who rides a motorcycle on the sly and yearns to go up in a plane, though daddy forbids it.

For some reason, the makeup artists on the production slather Miles' face with gobs of blush and eye shadow, to the point she resembles Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter in her closeups. It's almost like there was a concerted effort to make her less attractive.

Stuart Witman plays Orvil Newton, the American cowpoke who brings his outdated flyer across the sea to compete for the huge cash prize. Wearing a 10-gallon hat and jeans that would be considered too tight even by Tony Manero from "Saturday Night Fever," he forms the main competition to Mays -- both for the trophy and Patricia's affections.

Alberto Sordi plays Ponticelli, the Italian count who doesn't need the money but does need a plane, as his tend to make too much tender acquaintance with the ground. Jean-Pierre Cassel plays the French hope, Pierre Dubois, who keeps getting sidetracked by a series of identical women wherever he lands, all played by Irina Demick, at whom he pitches woo.

Gert Fröbe is a hoot as the German competitor, Colonel Manfred von Holstein, who knows literally nothing about flying but is convinced that "a German officer can do anything." After training up a younger and much slimmer man as pilot, he jumps in the cockpit himself when the fellow turns ill. (Courtesy of Sir Percy.) He's a by-the-book man, so he follows the instructions to a T, including the first one, "Sit down."

Probably the most famous scene in the movie is von Holstein hanging upside-down from his plane as it flies a few feet above the sea, his feet flailing wildly as he tries to "run" along the surface of the ocean. Achieved with wires and camera trickery, it's something straight out of Bugs Bunny.

I wondered about the geopolitical implications of "Magnificent Men," even though this is not the sort of film to invite such contemplation. There seems to me something problematic with poking fun at the martial rigidity of the Germans, given that in a few years after the film's timeline they would launch a deadly war, followed by another.

This film came out around the same time "Hogan's Heroes" debuted on American television, so maybe everyone felt 20 years after WWII was enough to treat the Germans as the butt of the joke again.

Reeling Backward: "Darby's Rangers" (1958)

If I may suggest an alternate title for "Darby's Rangers," a 1958 alleged war film that marked the leading-man debut of James Garner, it would be "The Star-Crossed Love Lives of Darby's Rangers."

Never have I seen a military drama so done in by sex. It's not enough to say that romance is a recurring distraction in this film; it would be more accurate to describe the battle scenes as interrupting all the mush.

This insipid movie was directed by William Wellman, who made other, better war pictures, including the outstanding "Battleground." The film, written Guy Trosper from a book by James J. Altieri -- who served in the original Army commando troops dreamed up and led by William Darby -- purports to explore the inception, training and exploits of Darby's Rangers, who would form the basis of the glorious Army Rangers.

But almost from the start, the movie seems less concerned with the usual tropes about men of disparate backgrounds bonding during the cruel grinder of war than with the women they fall for. First, during training in England, it's a bunch of British lasses. Later, the love story moves to the Italian peninsula.

I have not read the book by Altieri, but based on its title -- "The Spearheaders" -- I seriously doubt it followed the amorous adventures of the Ranger battalions. I can only imagine his shock upon seeing his war memoir turned into a two-hour mash note.

There are really only two aspects of "Darby's Rangers" worth commenting on: The young cast, which contained a number of notable fresh faces, and a pair of combat scenes that show off Wellman's considerable ability with action and suspense.

Garner is best known as a television actor these days, but his film career was long and bright. He has a good, forceful presence as Darby, a man inexperienced in combat but who nonetheless had a clear vision of what this new model of soldier could do. At one point he angrily complains to a high-up general about his men being bogged down in foxholes in Italy -- not because he considers the duty beneath them, but because it's such a poor use of expert troops trained at guerrilla tactics.

Charlton Heston was originally slated to play Darby, but made exorbitant (for the time) demands for a share of the profits. Garner, then 30, had been cast as Sgt. Bishop, a smooth card shark from Reno, but was tapped for the lead role right before shooting started. Stuart Whitman, featured in last week's classic film column, slid into the Bishop part.

Jack Warden plays Darby's right-hand man, a Jewish master sergeant who also provides the film's laconic (and largely unnecessary) narration. Murray Hamilton, forever the obsequious mayor from "Jaws," also turns up in a small role as a Ranger who loves to get into scraps, and whose Irish accent comes and goes.

Edd Byrnes shows up halfway through the movie as a fresh-faced lieutenant who learns that doing things by the book isn't always the best way with the Rangers, who relish their status as dogface killing machines. He finds out just how much when he falls for an Italian girl (Etchika Choureau) and runs into all sorts of ridiculous complications, ending with a pregnancy and a desperate need for penicillin, which he can only obtain from the military dispensary by marrying her.

I know the Italians can be pretty traditional about marriage, but I'm pretty sure the bride has to be conscience when the wedding takes place.

Byrnes had just become a star playing Kookie, a character on the TV show "77 Sunset Strip," who was known for constantly combing his hair. Byrnes wears a lavishly-styled pompadour in "Darby's Rangers" that most military barbers, and even Donald Trump, would find excessive.

Whitman, as Bishop, has his own romance with an English bus attendant (Joan Elan) who turns out to be the daughter of a wealthy lord and lady. Bishop resents being roped in, including the girl's adamant declaration that they will marry one day, and skips out.

Peter Brown, playing young Private Rollo Burns, has his own U.K. romance with the 19-year-old daughter of his Scottish training sergeant. They get engaged just before he ships out.

In the most bizarre sequence, one Ranger recruit known as a Lothario seduces the wife of the British professor whose house he's temporarily billeted in. The marriage is broken up, the soldier dies in a training accident, and the wayward housewife gets a nasty comeuppance from the aforementioned Scottish sergeant.

Just when I was thinking "Darby's Rangers" was irredeemable, a couple of stellar combat scenes arrive late in the going. They're notable because the movie makes extensive use of stock footage from the war, so these are some of the few combat scenes that were actually shot for the movie.

One involves a line of Rangers ducking past a convoy of German Panzers. They wait until the tank is right upon them, then scurry past the looming treads, where the pilot can't see them. It's a riveting bit, as we keep expecting a misstep to result in a horrible death.

The other terrific sequence is a battle in the fog, with the Rangers trying to fight an enemy they can't even see. The fog is pea-soup-thick, and looks like it was poured down like a gray blanket from Olympus. The scene has an unnerving dream-like quality.

During the few minutes "Darby's Rangers" can spare from exploring the love lives of soldiers, it actually reminds us what a good war movie resembles.

1.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Comancheros" (1961)

I don't regard "The Comancheros" as an exceptional Western. Its production values are exquisite -- gorgeous Deluxe color Cinemascope photography by William H. Clothier, a jaunty and memorable score by Elmer Bernstein, wonderfully detailed sets and costumes, and the steady hand and keen eye of director Michael Curtiz.

But in terms of plot and themes, it's largely a muddle. John Wayne plays Jake Cutter, a Texas Ranger who spends much of the movie undercover posing as a gunrunner. He apprehends Paul Regret (Stuart Whitman), a Louisiana gambler wanted for murder after he won a duel against the son of a wealthy New Orleans family. They part ways, reconnect, evolve from adversaries to allies, and eventually team up to take down the Comancheros -- white and Hispanic men who have been supplying the Comanche Indians with rifles and whiskey.

Oh, and there's a short-shrifted romance, too.

The story seems to meander with the tumbleweeds, following one course for awhile until it grows boring or reaches a dead end, and then picks up a breeze and heads the other way.

What I did find notable about the film is Wayne's character and performance. Despite a life of pain, including having his family killed, Cutter has an upbeat demeanor, always quick with a smile and a joke. He treats even his enemies with a friendly regard and a measure of respect. I can't remember another movie in which Wayne's eye twinkled so brightly and often.

This is at odds with the Duke's star persona, which always had a streak of orneriness running through. Sometimes meanness dominated the character, as with Ethan Edwards in "The Searchers," and sometimes it was barely discernible, like the Ringo Kid from "Stagecoach." Most of the time, though, Wayne's cussedness lay just beneath the surface, like the hard iron of a Colt Peacemaker inside a comfortably worn leather holster.

There's really only one moment in "The Comancheros" when Cutter loses his temper, and that's in his confrontation with Comanchero Tully Crow. Cutter, posing as gunrunner Ed McBain -- complete with foppish grey top hat -- rendezvous with Crow and cuts a deal to sell guns to the Comanche. They get drunk to celebrate, wind down with steak dinners and a game of cards, and get into an argument about cheating.

What's memorable about this scene is how Wayne's character repeatedly and deliberately ignores the other man's threats and insults, and only resorts to violence when Crow draws on him. Most of Wayne's hombres would have thrown done at the first hint of disrespect.

Crow is played by Lee Marvin in a deliciously vicious, brief performance made all the more memorable by the fact that Crow only has half a scalp -- the other having been taken by the Comanche before he gained their trust and began bartering with them. Curtiz aims the camera leeringly at Crow's raw, bizarre wound -- a freakshow counterpoint to the man's even more repulsive personality.

Speaking of Curtiz, "The Comancheros" was his last film. He died shortly after its completion, and in fact he did not actually finish filming. His health forced him to drop out, and Wayne himself completed production in the director's chair ... though he refused an onscreen credit for co-directing.

Curtiz' name is generally not mentioned when lists of the great Golden Age directors are bandied about, but he deserves to be. Because he was largely a journeyman filmmaker, who took whatever jobs the studio assigned him or (later) he could find, most historians and critics regard him merely as a capable gun-for-hire who was lucky enough to find himself attached to good projects.

Bollocks. One does not acquire this sort of astonishing filmography -- "Casablanca," "Yankee Doodle Dandy," "Mildred Pierce," "Angels with Dirty Faces," "Captain Blood," "The Adventures of Robin Hood," to name just a few -- through happenstance. The very fact that he did not have a distinctive style is what made him great: Curtiz adapted his artistry to the material, rather than forcing his vision on a picture like a Hitchcock or Ford would have.

Stuart Whitman had an interesting career. Though he was never quite a star, he worked steadily in film and television for nearly 60 years, until a self-imposed retirement starting about a decade ago. He's still with us, and contributed to a fantastic new Blu-ray edition of "The Comancheros" to celebrate its 50th anniversary.

Ina Balin plays Pilar Graile, daughter of the head of the Comancheros. In the grand Hollywood tradition of Caucasian actors assigned to ethnic roles, Balin was a Jewess from Brooklyn playing a Hispanic woman. Pilar is interesting for her unbending self-confidence, pursuing a romance with Regret -- but only if she can maintain the upper hand.

Nehemiah Persoff has a steely turn as her father, a crippled man who nonetheless rules the Comancheros with the absolute power of a patriarch. (Persoff was also Jewish, so I guess at least there was a twisted consistency.) Even Cutter acknowledges that father Graile must have been "a man to step aside from" when he was young and whole.

The plot seems to have its own, unfathomable rhythm. The screenplay by Clair Huffaker and James Edward Grant is based on the novel by Paul Wellman. Cutter's pressing duty ricochets back and forth between apprehending Regret and tracking the source of the Comanche's guns. They end up in the Comanchero village for the final showdown with the Rangers almost by happenstance.

Speaking of guns, despite being set in the 1840s, the rifles depicted in the movie are lever-action Winchesters not available until after the Civil War. Similarly, the revolvers are not the clumsy cap-and-ball weapons of that era but the more advanced cartridge pistols that were not invented until 30 years later.

Usually, Hollywood would have just rejiggered the period for the sake of expediency. But the Comanche tribes were relegated to reservations by the 1850s, and the Comancheros quickly faded away without their best trading customer.

"The Comancheros" is not a particularly good example of the classic Western, but I found it an engaging movie to see and think about. Some movies are like that -- better when considered than watched.

3 stars out of four