Thunder in the Cinema

摘要

Needle-nosed jets with sweptback wings were an irresistible draw to those raised on space heroes like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Some films that emerged from the postwar dream factories were slapdash affairs, while others were major efforts to depict a world hardly imagined by middle-class American audiences. Howard Hughes' costly fiasco Jet Pilot, filmed in the late 1940s, became a laughingstock upon its release in 1957, when the aircraft it featured were hopelessly outdated. But the superb Strategic Air Command of 1955 was as fine a work of the filmmaker's art as has ever touched the silver screen. In this article we'll revisit a few old favorites, discover a couple of virtually forgotten films and explore others that deserve more appreciation than they received when they first appeared in theaters.