The New Pictures

Air Force (Warner), a superbly thrilling show, is easily the best aviation film to date. Its heroine is a Flying Fortress named Mary Ann; its cast boasts no flashy stars; its battles are not embellished by Hollywood imagination. It is dedicated to the simple and excellent purpose of showing how U.S. airmen fight. The Mary Ann and her crew, a composite of many ships and men, fight in every important air battle from Pearl Harbor to the Coral Sea, including a re-enactment of Colin Kelly's attack on the battleship Haruna. In this story of one ship, Air Force rolls up all the excitement of the air war in the Pacific.

The crew that takes off from San Francisco in the Mary Ann is exquisitely ordinary. Among them are lanky, quiet Pilot Captain Quincannon (John Ridgely), who takes along one of his baby's dolls for good luck; moonfaced, wisecracking Waist Gunner Weinberg (George Tobias); tough, sullen Rear Gunner Winocki (John Garfield), who broods bitterly because he was washed out as a pilot. Crew chief, mechanic and handy man is sentimental old Sergeant Pop White (Harry Carey), who is corny and just right.

After the Haruna battle, with Pilot Quincannon mortally wounded, two motors damaged and the Mary Ann riddled like a Swiss cheese, her crew throws her bombsight into the sea and bails out. But Gunner Winocki hangs on, brings her home to a pancake landing. Almost a wreck, the Mary Ann is ordered burned by the Army air commander. But she has one more big fight left in her. While ground troops hold off the Japs, the Mary Ann's crew patches her together in the jungle. Over the Coral Sea she joins fighters, torpedo and dive-bombers in a tremendous attack on the Jap Fleet, limps away after the battle, lands on an Australian beach.

If Air Force belongs to anyone, it belongs to able Director Howard Hawks.

How It Was Made. Air Force was a tremendous undertaking, even for Hollywood. Most of it was made near Tampa. For flying sequences he had a real Flying Fortress (since lost in action in the South Pacific) and for interior shots a $40,000 Fortress model was built. Also required: a technical crew of 100 men, three camera planes, ten cameras, Army planes. The Army opened its files to Hawks and helped him make it.

Hawks found some incredible stuff in the files. One stunt, authenticated by actuality: Gunner Winocki, troubled by Mary Ann's one blind spot, unceremoniously chops a hole in the ship's tail and installs a gun there. Hawks, who pilots his own plane, believes that the two most thrilling moments in flying are taking off and landing, so Air Force is full of such moments.

Gentleman Director. A rare bird in Hollywood is tall (6 ft. 3), white-haired,-stoop-shouldered Howard Hawks. A quiet, cultured citizen, he was educated in engineering at Cornell ('17), served in the Air Corps (not overseas) in World War I, broke into movies as a prop man with the old Famous Players-Lasky. When he inherited $150,000 from his grandfather, he plunged it all in a Western (Ben Hampton of Placer), tripled his money, lost it all on a second Western (never finished).

As director, he has made some of Hollywood's biggest successes: Dawn Patrol (first big flying film), Scar face (which started the gangster picture cycle), Sergeant York. First married to Athole Shearer (Norma's sister), Howard Hawks was divorced by her in 1940, and last year married a young scenario writer, Nancy Gross, lives with her on a new 100-acre ranch in the hills west of Los Angeles.

In Hollywood he is known as an ungregarious, stiffly independent man who does not hesitate to walk out of a studio if a picture is not produced to his liking. A director's director, he commands $150,000 a picture, top pay for the job.

One Day of War (MARCH OF TIME--20th Century-Fox) is a day that will be seen and remembered long after this war. The picture is a record of a single day along the entire vast Russian front. The film is one of the finest documentary pictures ever made.

To film this day's fighting for Soviet Government archives, the Russian cameramen went into action with front-line land, sea & air forces from the Baltic to Sevastopol. Their work, popularly known as June 13th (TIME, Oct. 19), was exhibited in Russia only. As edited by the MARCH OF TIME, One Day of War packs the best of this film into 20 minutes of intensely exciting action.

This picture shows immense tanks rolling from factories in the Urals; smudge-faced women mining coal; men and women working on tea plantations, in oil fields, and in munitions factories.

Then the soldiers' day begins with steel-helmeted troops marching at dawn from Moscow to the battlefront. Within seconds the film plunges into the grim reality of war: a Marine, crawling across a field near Leningrad, is killed by a Nazi bullet in front of the camera. Then a plane, trailing black smoke, crashes to earth. With the terrible veracity of death the film ranges the long battlefront: a Soviet submarine sights a ship through its periscope and torpedoes her; Soviet ski troops swoop down a hill under fire and some fall. A company of guerrillas storm a village. When the battle ends, they angrily execute a captured traitor.

Most vivid scene: a tank battle, showing Soviet soldiers riding on tanks up to the enemy's lines and then charging into the mouth of his guns. Through tank gun-slits the camera looks straight down the barrel of Nazi anti-tank guns, firing at point-blank range.

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