randy_byers: (thesiger)
[personal profile] randy_byers
An Australian, a Canadian, and an American walk into a pub ...

Raoul Walsh's Desperate Journey is a load of old tosh, but it's ridiculously entertaining tosh. Errol Flynn (a Tasmanian by birth) plays the Australian leader of a multinational bombing crew that is shot down during a mission over Germany. Their desperate journey is through enemy terrain, trying to make it back to England. The movie opens with an explosion, and the action hardly lets up after that. This is an adventure story, for the most part, but there are serious undertones beneath the swashbuckling and patriotic fervor (and groan-worthy death scenes). Most notable, perhaps, is the discovery of underground anti-Nazi Germans. I wonder if the Japanese were ever portrayed this sympathetically in Hollywood during WWII? Less serious is Raymond Massey as an unconvincing, nearly-comic, blustering, flailing Nazi commander. Who sometimes speaks German! Flynn's character can speak German too, which I guess is okay for an Australian. The American characters (affable good old boys Ronald Reagan and Alan Hale) can only mock the language.

Walsh's ability as a visual storyteller speaks for itself, I think. The lighting by DP Bert Glennon, who also shot for Josef von Sternberg and John Ford, is dark and atmospheric and frequently shot from low angles, like a noir. The movie is full of striking visual imagery, even when it's models and miniatures.





























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