No Highway in the Sky

Theodore Honey is an engineer at an aeronautical research establishment. By his calculation the tail of a new airliner will fail from metal fatigue after a certain number of flying hours. Nobody takes him seriously; he is dishevelled, socially hopeless and his claim is untested. Then he boards one of those aircraft and learns its hours. The subject is not aviation but what an expert nobody listens to can actually do. Honey has no authority; all he can manage is something close to sabotage in order to keep the plane on the ground. The film draws him as neither hero nor crank. The form is calm and talk-heavy. The tension is built in meeting rooms and the cabin, not in the air. There is little flying and it is not showy. What makes it interesting now is its timing. The film came out in 1951; three years later real airliners suffered accidents caused by metal fatigue and the subject became one of the best-known engineering cases in aviation history. The source is Nevil Shute's novel, and the author was himself an aeronautical engineer, which explains the technical solidity of the text. James Stewart plays the engineer, Marlene Dietrich the actress on the flight and Glynis Johns the stewardess. Henry Koster directs. Who it is for: viewers who like suspense built on technical detail, and Stewart. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action; almost nothing happens in the air.