jehormaeche-1
They broad casted it en Argentina by 1972, and I was 8. Never seen it again, and already forgot its title, but in my memory remains a feeling of mystery, pain and deep atmosphere during Sam's investigation. I remember his emotional self restrain, the conflict between his believe and what was convenient for his career, the sadness for the loss of many lives, including his bud's. The stronger image that never left me is Ford walking alone inside the hangar where crash debris had been deployed. And because of this moody sequence I searched for the movie it belonged to. I'm willing to watch it over as an adult, and see what happens to me when I meet this scene again.
hgiersbe
It seems like there is always someone who has to come along and tell us how this or that could not happen. For example, a pilot setting a cup of coffee on an instrument panel during takeoff. Oh come on! What would we, the mindless minions do without the superior intellect of reviewers like this to tell us what we actually already know? Please spare boring us with your pseudo-intelligence people.Another thing I'd like to see is reviewers that would stop retelling the story line. Come on people... we know the story. If that is all you have to offer, please sit down and hush. Can't you look deeper into the art and give us a real nugget? Some reviews were very good. I especially liked the one which introduced us to the concept of multivariate statistics. I did a little reading on that. This movie played on that concept quite a bit. I could be wrong but it seems to me that one way to explain it is using rogue waves as an example. A little wave here and there is nothing and a boat could easily handle them but at some point all the little waves could come together and add up to a disaster.I got this movie for two reasons: I like Glenn Ford and I like airplanes. Perhaps this movie would make a good object lesson for an acting school somewhere. There were parts of Ford's performance that were great and it did not register that the man was acting. In other parts it seemed obvious he was posing for the camera. I'm thinking about it now and I think Ford would have been a great actor to play Harry Bosch in one of Michael Connelly's novels. Ford's mood and noir might go together well to make a Bosch. I've read a little about Ford and he sounded like a stand-up guy. I would think he might feel embarrassed in his profession by people today like Charles Sheen. Sheen would be a good object lesson for anyone thinking about taking drugs for the first time (or second, or third, etc) For you aviation buffs out there trying to reverse engineer the plane in the movie... I read on one website that the movie producers very deliberately made up some plane that looked like nothing else that existed. They did not want to have to deal with possible lawsuits so to those of you who are trying to impress us with your aviation knowledge... stop boring us. Go work for Airbus if you're so smart.Taylor and Pleshette played together in "The Birds." I forgot that until I saw the credit material at the end. Kwan gave me just enough that I'd like to see other movies she has been in. Maybe Mark Stevens (Mickey) as well. I think the movie did a good job in the aspect of character development. In the end I missed Jack Savage and wanted to meet "his friends" at the closing credits.
cherimerritt
This movie is one of my all-time favorites that I'm happy to share tonight with my movie-buff husband who has never seen it. (I'll bet Tony DiNozzo would remember it, though.) I've been trying to remember the title for ages (couldn't recall Rod Taylor's last name to look it up online. Getting senile I guess.)I agree with Roscoe-4. "It illustrates the many zany and unusual things that can happen to change our lives forever." The actual cause of this plane crash has stuck with me since I first saw the film over 30 years ago on TV. Many times I have caught myself in the midst of a possible negative chain-of-events and changed something I was doing because of this movie (especially if there was a cup of coffee involved in what I was doing). It also probably lead to my interest in Multivariate Statistics (quantification of the phenomenon of multiple variables leading to a single outcome.)Personally, I think everyone should see this film. At least it tells a person to keep looking deeper for causes instead of assuming that "what you think is accurate" is also worth believing just because "it makes sense" to you. "It makes sense" should never be enough by itself to lead us all the way to a conclusion.
Robert J. Maxwell
It certainly looks as if the whimsical, Byronic airline captain Rod Taylor is responsible for this accident, which left 52 people dead, himself included, sparing only Susanne Pleshette, the flight attendant. The airline traffic safety board convenes and, despite the strong reservations of executive Glenn Ford, an old friend of Taylor's, is headed towards the dreaded explanation of "pilot error." You see, Taylor was observed patronizing several bars the night before the flight, in the company of someone named Mickey who can't be located. Taylor had a history of cheerful abandon even during the war and he's a kind of convenient scapegoat alright.Glenn Ford, however, is convinced that some other force was at work. He tracks down some old friends of Taylor's and they all vouch for his probity. At the last minute, the mysterious and alcoholic Mickey shows up and reveals that although Taylor bought a dozen drinks the night before the accident, they were all for him, Mickey, not for Taylor Not good enough for the Board of Inquisitors. If it wasn't booze, what was it? Taylor apparently lost one engine after another shortly after take off then, perhaps in a panic, plowed into a pier that no one knew was there.Taking his cue from the gorgeous Nancy Kwan, an oceanographer who had a perfectly innocent meeting with Taylor, Ford advances the novel proposition before the board that if it wasn't mechanical failure and it wasn't pilot error, then it must have been -- "the supernatural." Yes, girls and boys, FATE is the hunter. What else could have brought all these conditions together -- the flight of birds, the engine failure, the unknown pier, the radio failure -- at exactly the right time and place to cause the accident except -- fate.Actually, you don't have to dig into the supernatural (or reach skyward) for that. It can be explained by a simple and drab deterministic universe. Everything that happens at a given place and time is determined by a multitude of previous events. One thing causes another and every once in a while they come together in a wildly improbable manner to cause something more important than all of them put together. You will sometimes have a perfect accident just as you will sometimes have a "perfect storm." Ford may call it Fate but I'd call it statistical probability.That's a little egg-headed, I know, but the explanation is never explored anyway. It all turns out to have to do with a paper cup of coffee that spilled on Taylor's pedestal when the first engine quit and the airplane jarred momentarily. The coffee dripped into an electrical unit and shorted out some other circuits and caused all sorts of false alarms, to which Taylor unwittingly responded. That was fate in a cup of coffee. Maxwell House, I hope.Harold Medford wrote the screenplay which has practically nothing to do with Ernet K. Gann's superb memoirs with the same title. I imagine Medford being handed the assignment with directions something like this. "We've got the rights to Gann's book. Now make up a story that will fit the title. And we've got Glenn Ford, Nancy Kwan, Dorothy Malone, Susanne Pleshette, Mark Stevens, and some reliable supporting players, so squeeze all of them in. Try to make the story about airplanes." Not much from the book appears in the movie. Sometimes events show up but in altered form. It was Gann who played the concertina, not a friend. And it was Gann who got the garter of the famous lady on the USO tour during the war, only the famous lady wasn't Jane Russell but Marlene Dietrich.Oh, hell. You want a bewitching story about fate and flying? Read the book.
