Flying on Film: A Century of Aviation in the Movies 1912-2012

摘要

This is a compilation of descriptive critiques of many, but not all, movies produced from 1912 through 2012 that have featured aviation as a primary or secondary theme. Chapter Eight, 'Drama and Disaster: Airliners', will be of particular interest to Airways readers, with a discussion of the 1936 film, China Clipper. To sample a few of the other notable movies reviewed: No Highway in the Sky, based on the novel No Highway by Nevil Shute and released in 1951, is considered by some as a portent of the 1954 de Havilland Comet disasters. Starring James Stewart as a Farnborough engineer, it features a strange-looking four-engine piston airliner (the 'Reindeer') with an even stranger-looking tail that Stewart's character, Theodore Honey, predicts will fail soon after the airplane's entry into service. Of course, Honey is correct and he saves the day.