The Dawn Patrol
by Bobby Connolly, Edmund Goulding, Robert Clampett, Roy Mack
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anne Nagel, Basil Rathbone, Errol Flynn, Mel Blanc, Walter CasselDirector: Bobby Connolly, Edmund Goulding, Robert Clampett, Roy Mack
Brand: Warner Brothers
Writer: Cyrus Wood
Writer: Dan Totheroh
Writer: Ed Earl Repp
Writer: Eddie Forman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; 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: Command Responsibility...
Summary: 5 Stars
1938's "Dawn Patrol" captures a theme familiar to fans of the war movie genre: the awful responsibility of command amid the fearful attrition of combat. In "Dawn Patrol", Errol Flynn and David Niven portray veteran Royal Flying Corps pilots Courtney and Scott, grim survivors of aerial combat over the 1915 Western Front of World War I. The two men fly hair-raising missions each day in rickety aircraft and carouse drunkenly at night, while replacements show up and die before they can even unpack their bags. The commander of their 59th Flying Squadron, Major Brand (a superbly conflicted Basil Rathbone), wrestles with high command over impossible orders but resolutely sends the men out each day on mission.
When an opposing German flying squadron challenges the 59th by dropping a pair of trench boots on their aerodrome, Courtney and Scott defy orders to return the insult. In a thrilling flying sequence, the two men bomb and strafe the enemy aerodrome, then survive additional hazards on the return trip. The two pilots face court-martial, but in a twist of fate, Major Brand is promoted, leaving a stunned Captain Courtney to fill his shoes as squadron commander. Courtney soon discovers the terrible responsibility that comes with command, including the loss of his friendship with Scott. When a vitally important but almost certainly suicidal mission comes down, Courtenay faces a heart-breaking choice.
"Dawn Patrol" features entertaining repartee between real-life friends Flynn and Niven, a vision of fellowship amid dispair among the fliers, and some excellent flying sequences featuring World War I aircraft. The film offers its own take on a theme repeated in "Twelve O'Clock High" and "Command Decision" and is very highly recommended to fans of those movies.
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.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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