Air Force

Howard Hawks's 1943 film opens immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The crew of a bomber reaches Hawaii in the aftermath and is sent on to Manila to help defend the Philippines. Almost all of it takes place inside and around the aircraft, and the idea of the professional group at the centre of all Hawks's work is applied here to a military crew. Who does which job, who trusts whom, and how the group keeps working after a loss are the real subject. Made while the war was still running, its purpose is plainly to raise morale, and in drawing the enemy it reaches for the propaganda language of the period; those passages are uncomfortable now. Technically the aerial sequences are among the best of their day. Who it's for: viewers interested in Hawks and in wartime American production. Who it's not for: anyone who does not want to watch the period's anti-Japanese propaganda; the film contains it directly.