They Flew Alone (1942) Reviews

• Reviewing with Hindsight,not a good thing.

  winles2013-01-06

  I think that thorwald should bear in mind the circumstances that lead to the making of this film. In 1942 Britain's wartime courage had slipped to it's lowest,and many people were doubting whether we could win the war.The US did not enter WW2 until Dec 1941,and this film was made before that. The main reason that this film was made when it was,is the fact that Amy Johnson died on January 5th 1941,whilst ferrying RAF planes to airfields(her plane crashed in the Thames Estuary).So the filmmakers used this as a tribute,AND a propaganda film. If it HAD been left until after the war the impetus would probably have gone and the film would not have been made at all.There are probably quite a few(US & UK) poor quality films that apart from propaganda would not have been made.It is unwise to judge such film from the distance of 70 years or so,given that the motives for making them might seem dubious to us now.We may criticise old films that are just plain bad,but to judge wartime films purely on their film value(without their historic context) is just stupid and demeans the memory of those that took part in WW2,whether in the forces,or in the filmmaking world. It would be nice to be able to alter history,but we can't.These wartime films (good or bad) are part of WW2 and if we judge them out of context,and we alter the history they are represent.

• Wings of a Neagle

  Oct2004-10-22

  As the British film business hit its all-time height of popular patronage, Anna Neagle overtook Gracie Fields with productions such as 'They Flew Alone'. For seven years Neagle would be the country's favourite female star. Today, a century after she was born, we may well wonder why. Neagle is not so "fratefully refained" that she cannot be watched without wincing, but she is neither restrainedly sexy like Greer Garson nor noisily gamesome like Jessie Matthews. Anna's bony, handsome features rarely modulate much further than well-bred puzzlement or amusement, ideal for stiff upper lip roles but hardly electrifying: Graham Greene compared her to 'a mechanical marvel from the World's Fair'. Perhaps her soothing reliability suited the national mood between tense wartime and shabby peace. Few husband/wife partnerships were more fruitful than Herbert Wilcox's with Anna. As a producer-director with ambitious plans and a taste for spectacle, the Irishman resembles Korda. But this Svengali did more for his Trilby than Korda for Merle Oberon. Anna looked nothing like the gallant lone flier Amy Johnson, but having already played Nell Gwynn, Peg Woffington, Queen Victoria (twice) and Edith Cavell, she exercised a prescriptive right to impersonate British heroines. This flagwaver was her first British picture since returning from Hollywood, anxious not to be tarred with the same unpatriotic brush as Gracie Fields. Accordingly the script fades up the topical echoes from Amy's exploits a decade or so earlier. She speaks to Australians about air-minded youth binding the Empire closer together with airplanes, as the Royal Navy had done with ships. Memories of the Battle of Britain and the current area bombing of Germany would be on the original audience's minds. Amy is shown as a visionary of the strategic importance of air power. For modern viewers the feminist angle is more intriguing. The film is dedicated to all women 'who have driven through the centuries of convention.' Amy is a rebel who refuses to wear a straw hat at school, is tutted over and will 'never amount to anything'. She graduates from university and is bored by office and shop work. Only two years after her generation of women were given the vote, she becomes the first female to fly solo from London to Australia, months after getting her pilot's licence. Many other records fall to her Yorkshire grit. Robert Newton, not yet the eyeball-rolling ham of 'Henry V' and 'Treasure Island', discreetly assists Neagle's virtual one-woman show as her husband, Jim Mollison. The movie emphasises her triumphs and failed marriage with fellow-flyer Mollison more than her early struggles. There are endless montages of telegrams and newspaper headlines, fake radio and newsreel commentaries, stock shots of far-flung places. The few scenes on aircraft are obviously back-projected. Nonetheless, the spills which punctuated the Mollisons' career are not glossed over and the film zips confidently along, as smooth as a Hollywood biopic but laced with snatches of British understatement: 'There's nowt much wrong wi' them' (Amy's dad on the Royal Family after the King gives her a medal). 'What happened, Jim?' 'I crashed.' (Mollison, rising from wreckage.) 'We'll have to take a chance. Are you scared?' 'Yes.' 'So am I'. (The couple, caught in more wreckage.) Amy Johnson was killed in January 1941 on active service in the Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying a new Airspeed Oxford. She was 37. Her body was never recovered, but the 'stringbag' Gypsy Moth biplane in which she first flew to Australia is preserved in London's Science Museum.

• They flew together

  AAdaSC2015-11-29

  This film tells the story of Amy Johnson, the first female pilot to make all sorts of solo flights and set records in the 1930s. She meets fellow aviator Jim Mollison who, likewise, sets all kinds of records in what can be seen as a rivalry. Fate brings them together and they marry. However, the marriage has problems and then the 2nd World War breaks out where they both take their places and play a role. Unfortunately, for Amy... Anna Neagle portrays Amy Johnson and Robert Newton plays Jim Mollison and it's not a bad film. It certainly seems shorter than its hour and three quarters running time. We have the obvious patriotic call for all women to join in the war effort at the film's end and it's a shame that Neagle tries a northern accent. She kind of slips in and out of it and sounds like a posh person putting on a northern accent. Still, we get an accurate portrayal of events in her life including a glimpse of the alcoholism that was to plague Mollison. What do you expect, he's Scottish!

• Newton and Neagle

  artzau2000-12-12

  This film is a bit "hambone," but when you filter out the time frame (1941) and the great actor Robert Newton, memorable as Long John Silver 9 years later and Anne Neagle, it works. The story does highlight the career of the struggle women had to gain recognition on the same level as men. But, it might be a bit slow for modern tastes. Still, I love watching Newton, who tragically died at 51 in 1956. Neagle went on to make other films, but Newton stole the scenes, in my book. Check it out.

• Good old Anna

  milliefan2013-01-06

  Anna Neagle gives a sterling performance in this otherwise dreary and pedestrian biopic of flying ace Amy Johnson - she even manages a very credible northern accent for a lady with such natural RP delivery. Anna was always slighted as an actress of limited range, promoted to major stardom by her besotted husband Herbert Wilcox, however of the two personalities, Wilcox was really the lesser talent. His direction of this - and every Wilcox/Neagle film - is uninspiring and flat. No wonder Anna rarely came across brilliantly on the screen, under her husband's leaden workmanship. How sad that the man who did pick her from nowhere and promote her to stardom was a director of such limited skill: had she been spotted by a Hitchcock, or a Korda, for example, who knows how much more Miss Neagle might have brought to her roles.