Since its earliest days, the motion picture industry has been fascinated with aircraft. Indeed, oddly enough, the aviation industry and the motion picture industry are just about the same age. Technically movies are a bit older, but in reality not so much, as the type of movie we think of today, where people pay for a ticket and watch a feature of at least an hour, is just about the same age as aviation. Indeed, the Wright Brother's first flight was on December 17, 1903, just sixteen days after the release of the ground breaking film The Great Train Robbery, which is generally regarded as the first action picture.
The Great Train Robbery, we'd note, was a whopping twelve minutes long.
It wouldn't take long to make them longer, just as it wouldn't take long for flight to last longer. And as the two industries grew, they grew together.
Flight has always been regarded as glamorous, and early flight was dangerous, both of which made for the potential for dramatic films. And flight has featured in many.
We're really unlikely to catch them all here. But we'll catch some. And as we do, we'll add them to this list, so you can see where we discussed them. In quite a few instances, the initial review appeared on one of our companion blogs, which is why there's a short synopsis of the film here.
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The Best Years Of Our Lives
This is a link to a review on one of our companion blogs.
People may be surprised to see this listed here, but one of the central characters, Fred Derry, is a recently discharged bombardier. Aircraft feature prominently at the beginning of the film, and the end. Of note, this 1946 film shows aircraft from the war already being scrapped, with real footage.
Black Hawk Down
Black Hawk Down is a realistic portray of a disastrous American raid in Mogadishu Somalia. The raid was a helicopter born one, as the title indicates, and this film gives an excellent portrayal of modern warfare and the role of the helicopter in it.
The Blue Max
This is a classic portray of a German aviator in the Great War.
The Bridges At Toko-Ri
The 1954 film on a Korean War effort to take out hte aforementioned bridges, featuring both early Naval jet aviation and helicopters in central roles.
Dunkirk
This film is fantastic and a fantastic part of it if the treatment of aviation in it.
Flyboys
A hideously bad portrayal of the Lafayette Escadrille.
The Great Waldo Pepper
The classic portrayal of post World War One barnstorming.
The Longest Day
The classic treatment of Cornelius Ryan's narrative on Operation Overlord isn't an aviation movie per se, but aircraft and the airborne do feature prominently in it.
M*A*S*H
The famous television series, as well as the movie, both based on the novel feature early medical evacuation by helicopters prominently.
Operation Dumbo Drop
This Vietnam War film involves the airborne insertion of an elephant. It's a fictionalized treatment of an actual event.
The Red Baron
An unbelievably bad portray of the famous World War One German pilot by a German filmmaker.
Strategic Air Command
This not very good early Cold War film featured World War Two bomber pilot Jimmy Steward as a World War Two bomber pilot who is recalled to duty.
Twelve O'Cock High
The classic study of combat stress in a bomber squadron in World War Two.
The Vietnam War In Film
This is a link from one of our companion blogs and it addresses a bunch of Vietnam War movies in a single thread.
We won't try to separate them all out, as we did in that list, but we'll note that at least one of the films is specifically aviation centric, that being Bat 21. Another one, Apocalypse Now, features one of the greatest helicopter scenes of all time, even if its completely unrealistic.
Indeed, the helicopter was so central to the Vietnam War that helicopters are in nearly every Vietnam War movie without fail. Fighter aircraft tend to be as well. At least Apocalypse Now also features B-52s, in the form of radio traffic and, in the first version, a post credit bombing run.
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Related threads:
Grousing Over An Airport Name. John Wayne Airport, Orange County, California.
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