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Ceiling Zero

1935, Movie, NR, 95 mins

Ceiling Zero: Review

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The irrepressible, cocky, and dynamic James Cagney is a devil-may-care civil aviator who does what he pleases and flies by the seat of his pants. Tolerating his unpredictable little-boy stunts, his aggravating pranks and general I-don't-give-a-damn attitude is the soft-hearted Pat O'Brien, paired once again with his close friend Cagney. O'Brien is the ground commander who sends men into the air to test planes and deliver people, goods, and mail, and who wet-nurses the families of his pilots. Cagney, as usual, steals the show with his swaggering, humorous histrionics. He falls in love with aviatrix June Travis and begins to shirk his duties. In one scene he goes on a mock crying jag to win sympathy. Next he is riding a fellow flier, dumb-cluck Stuart Erwin, joking about Erwin's wife and kids. At first he is encouraged by his fellow fliers, but Cagney's frantic antics begin to wear on his associates. O'Brien reminds him that he's part of a team and should play it that way, but then Cagney dodges a risky assignment, pretending that he has a heart murmur, so he can keep a date with the beautiful Travis. Of course Erwin goes up in his place and tragically dies in an accident. Cagney's remorse at losing his good friend is obvious and deep, but Isabell Jewell, Erwin's wife, confronts Cagney, blaming him for her husband's death. The reckless, romantically self-destructive Cagney redeems himself by taking off in a dense fog (hence the title) to test a vital de-icing instrument and crashes to his death. Director Howard Hawks, who had a rich aviation background, provides many thrilling sequences, setting a pace so fast that, at times, it's difficult to keep up with the action. This is particularly true of O'Brien's machine gun-like orders to his pilots when all of them are in flight at the same time. CEILING ZERO was based on a play by Frank "Spig" Wead who also wrote the screenplay. Wead, a pilot during World War I, managed to returned unscathed only to fall out of a chair and become paralyzed for life. (John Wayne would later enact his life in THE WINGS OF EAGLES.) CEILING ZERO capitalized on two earlier civil aviation epics, NIGHT FLIGHT (MGM, 1933), and CHINA CLIPPER, released the same year, in which O'Brien was again the head of a commercial airline, this time opening up trans-Pacific air routes. (Remade as INTERNATIONAL SQUADRON, 1941.) leave a comment
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