Flight of the Phoenix (the original motion picture)

[BaalChatzaf]

-Flight of the Phoenix-, the original starring Jimmy Stewart and Richard Attenborough

see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059183/

If ever there were a movie made to tickle the Objectivist fancy this is the one! The movie is about an airplane blown way off course by a sirroco windstorm in the Saudi Arabian desert. It crashes. The plane is wrecked and the passengers are marooned beyond help. No one will spot them from the air and their radio is broken so they cannot summon help. What to do? What they do is build a new plane from the pieces of the wreck. This is the basic plot. But what is enjoyable about the movie is how the characters interact. Jimmy Stewart plays a washed up pilot who makes a living flying a worn out cargo plane for an oil company. His co-pilot (played by Richard Attenborough) is a lush. The savior of the situation is played by Hardy Krueger, who portrays an insufferable airplane designer. He is just obnoxious as only a German can be obnoxious, but he knows his shit. The drama is how the crew and passengers are forced to face their peril and do what must be done to get out alive. It is not easy. Pride and misplaced egotism get in the way, but eventually all such personality clashes are resolved. The movie is really about the resolution of the personality clashes more than it is about building a smaller plane from the wrecked parts of the large plane.

The price of life is facing facts. Reality does not take prisoners and it does not listen to prayers and pleas. This motion picture is a concretization of a principle stated by Rand (but not original with her): To command Nature one must first obey Nature.

From an O'ist p.o.v. insofar as I understand it, I would say this is a Must See.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited November 8, 2007 by BaalChatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

Baal; I agree. Flight is a really great movie. Thanks for the reminder.

[Brant Gaede]

Baal; I agree. Flight is a really great movie. Thanks for the reminder.

The homemade plane used in the movie crashed killing the pilot, but there was enough footage to finish it--barely. It was filmed in Arizona in 1965. I was in the army in an almost empty San Antonio movie theater when Jimmy Stewart suddenly appeared on stage as a favor to the theater's owner to talk about the movie I was about to see and the Flight movie he was making. I hardly knew who he was but I found him very likeable. I wonder if anybody in or out of Hollywood ever said or wrote anything bad about him. He was a real war hero, too.

--Brant

Edited November 8, 2007 by Brant Gaede

[jordanz]

One of favorite movies of all time. Great heroic and individualistic themes. I highly recommend it.

[Chris Grieb]

Jimmy Stewart made another movie about the same time as Flight called Shenandoah. It has several Libertarian themes. An individualist Virginia farmer widower with a large family who refuses to get involved in the Civil War. His youngest son is taken prisoner. It then becomes their war.

The movie has small streak of mysticism because the Stewart character has conversations with his dead wife.

Shenandoah is worth seeing.

It was done as a Broadway musical in 1976. I remember seeing a report that one of these actors persuaded many of his fellow cast members to vote for the LP candidate for President in 1976. I wondering if the story might have been as persuasive.

[BaalChatzaf]

Baal; I agree. Flight is a really great movie. Thanks for the reminder.

The homemade plane used in the movie crashed killing the pilot, but there was enough footage to finish it--barely. It was filmed in Arizona in 1965. I was in the army in an almost empty San Antonio movie theater when Jimmy Stewart suddenly appeared on stage as a favor to the theater's owner to talk about the movie I was about to see and the Flight movie he was making. I hardly knew who he was but I found him very likeable. I wonder if anybody in or out of Hollywood ever said or wrote anything bad about him. He was a real war hero, too.

--Brant

Thjose who knew Jimmy Stewart loved him dearly. He was one of the really, really Good Guys. His celebrity did not go to his head and his did not have a mean bone in his body. Very unusual for Hollywood.

Bob Kolker

[BaalChatzaf]

Jimmy Stewart made another movie about the same time as Flight called Shenandoah. It has several Libertarian themes. An individualist Virginia farmer widower with a large family who refuses to get involved in the Civil War. His youngest son is taken prisoner. It then becomes their war.

The movie has small streak of mysticism because the Stewart character has conversations with his dead wife.

Shenandoah is worth seeing.

It was done as a Broadway musical in 1976. I remember seeing a report that one of these actors persuaded many of his fellow cast members to vote for the LP candidate for President in 1976. I wondering if the story might have been as persuasive.

I remember seeing -Shenandoah- on stage way back when but I don't recall it being a musical. I saw the motion picture. It was rather good.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[John Dailey]

~ Yes...this (the original ['65], with Stewart and Kruger) is a 'classic' to put in the parthenon of 'Great Films of All Time.'

~ Never saw Stewart 'up-close', but, have little doubt that he was not your typical (even of then) 'celebrity.' My, from afar, impression of him is that he was, actually, who we've all cinematically seen him to be: a 'straight-arrow.' Not many in or out of H'wood like him, methinks...especially nowadays.

~ My fascination with the film centered around the prob-conflict re everyone's discovery about Kruger's character 'Dorfmann', the 'plane designer', yet, ntl, accepting his recommendations (trying to avoid 'spoiler' here) about 'what to do.'

LLAP

J:D

Edited November 8, 2007 by John Dailey

[John Dailey]

ADDENDUM (re the 're'-make)

~ I must admit the 2004 re-make was just as well done...in it's own directorial style. Loved the cold-blooded way the 'plane designer' (here, 'Elliot', played by Giovanni Ribisi) executed the dunes' gang-bandit (to everyone's consternation) as an obviously necessary way to stall continued probs from the killer-bandit gang.

~ An interesting aside: I remember some reviews on the 'original' and much was made about it having no females in it (aside from one character's fantasies.) Such, story-wise in movies, WAS unusual for its time.

LLAP

J:D