Fate Is the Hunter

An airliner comes down shortly after take-off and only one stewardess survives. The inquiry blames the pilot: he had been drinking before the flight, he was distracted, the error was his. Sam McBane, an executive at the airline, does not believe it, because he has known that pilot since the war. He goes through the recording, the weather, the maintenance log, the stewardess's account, one at a time. In the end he decides to fly the crash again: same aircraft, same route, same conditions. Ralph Nelson directs the American film; a hundred and six minutes, with Glenn Ford as McBane, Suzanne Pleshette as the stewardess and Rod Taylor as the pilot. It is adapted from Ernest K. Gann's book; Gann was a pilot and wrote it out of what he had seen in his own flying years. The film departs from the book considerably.