The Dawn Patrol

The Dawn Patrol
by Robert Clampett, Edmund Goulding, Roy Mack

The Dawn Patrol
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Basil Rathbone, David Niven, Donald Crisp, Errol Flynn, Mel Blanc
Director: Edmund Goulding, Robert Clampett, Roy Mack
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); German (Original Language); English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-27
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video

Movie Reviews of The Dawn Patrol

Movie Review: Camaraderie, respect and etiquette
Summary: 5 Stars

Truly an enjoyable WWI movie. The aerial scenes were outstanding (Note: These were borrowed from the 1930 movie by the same name). The casting was on the mark. Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone, David Niven and Donald Crisp (Excellent actor) were perfectly cast. Plus, the brief but well acted role of the captured German aviator by Carl Esmond. The pressures and guilt of being a squadron commander and sending friends, colleagues, and inexperienced pilots against overwhelming odds to certain death. Then coping with the aftermath and being blamed and taking blame for their deaths. Being a responsible leader was a difficult and lonely job which leads to coping methods such as heavy drinking to get numb to it. This movie does a remarkable job of showing how courageous the WWI pilots were in going up on a daily basis on sorties knowing that they tempted fate and the chances of them not coming back became greater and greater. The bonds of cameraderie and respect were forged amongst the British flyers and their enemy counterparts. This movie showed the heroic acts of these pilots and also sent a message that there must be a better way to settle our differences. War is costly on both sides. I highly recommend this film.

Summary of The Dawn Patrol

Errol Flynn and David Niven star as roustabout French Corp fighter pilots who come face-to-face with the harsh realities of war. Basil Rathbone is outstanding as the Squadron Commander.Running Time: 103 min.System Requirements:Run Time: 103 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/MILITARY & WAR Rating: NR UPC: 012569796249 Manufacturer No: 79624
The Dawn Patrol is a beautiful title for two very good movies Warner Bros. made eight years apart, in 1930 and 1938. Both tell the same World War I story (which won a 1930 Academy Award for John Monk Saunders), about a succession of flight commanders at a British air base in France. Each officer in turn has to keep sending pilots out on dangerous, often insane missions in flimsy, patched-up planes, then pray that even half get back alive. The job is soul-killing for the commandants and deadly for their comrades and friends. Make that former friends.

It's the later, Errol Flynn version of The Dawn Patrol that's won DVD release. The original is rarely shown because, despite direction by Howard Hawks, it suffers from the stiffness and some overly declamatory acting characteristic of the early talkie era. Perhaps more to the point, the remake's cast has greater marquee value: Flynn and David Niven as hotshots Courtney and Scott; Basil Rathbone as Major Brand, the tortured commander whom Flynn will be obliged to succeed; Donald Crisp, Melville Cooper, and Barry Fitzgerald as staff officers and noncoms. Edmund Goulding's direction is proficient, if also impersonal.

So the remake has the edge as smooth entertainment, though not the original's raw power (or Griffith veteran Richard Barthelmess's tender, anguished performance as Courtney). And the best parts of the 1938 version are the original film: all the aerial footage--bombings, crashes, breathtaking low-level flying, and wobbly takeoffs in the glow of early morning--is Hawks's. Ideally, Warner Video should have issued both films, and in one box. --Richard T. Jameson

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