Broken Journey | |
---|---|
Directed by | Ken Annakin Michael C. Chorlton |
Written by | Robert Westerby |
Produced by | Sydney Box Roy Rich |
Starring | Phyllis Calvert James Donald Margot Grahame Francis L. Sullivan |
Cinematography | Jack E. Cox |
Edited by | Esmond Seal |
Music by | John Greenwood |
Production company | |
Distributed by | General Film Distributors (1948) (UK) (theatrical) Eagle-Lion Films (1949) (USA) |
Release date |
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Running time | 89 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Budget | £197,000 [1] [2] |
Box office | £118,200 (December 1949) [1] or £133,100 [3] |
Broken Journey (also known as Rescue) is a 1948 British drama film directed by Ken Annakin and featuring Phyllis Calvert, James Donald, Margot Grahame, Raymond Huntley and Guy Rolfe. [4] Passengers and crew strugge to survive after their airliner crashes on top of a mountain; based on a true-life accident in the Swiss Alps.
In postwar Europe, while flying over the Swiss Alps, a Fox Airways Douglas DC-3 airliner experiences engine trouble and sends out a distress call. Pilot Captain Fox and co-pilot Bill Haverton set the aircraft down on a glacier with a minimum of damage, but know that they will not be able to radio for help with run-down batteries and a storm setting in.
Taking stock of their situation, Haverton knows he can rely on stewardess Mary Johnstone; he is in love with her, but she is reluctant to admit her growing feelings for him since she is still mourning her fiance, who died on the last day of the war. However, some of the passengers present problems; film star Joanna Dane, opera tenor Perami and iron lung patient John Barber are all, in different ways, difficult and demanding passengers. The wrecked aircraft provides them with shelter, as the 13 passengers and crew wait for rescue.
Rescue missions have already been mounted but, when a rescue aircraft misjudges its approach, it crashes and the crew are killed. With limited food supplies, the survivors realise that a rescue in the desolate location is unlikely. The survivors have to decide whether to stay and wait for help or leave the shelter of the wrecked airliner and set out in bad weather to try to reach safety. Some people make sacrifices to allow others to live.
The plot of Broken Journey closely approximated the 1946 C-53 Skytrooper crash on the Gauli Glacier, Switzerland in November 1946. [6] The improvised operation that eventually resulted in the successful rescue of eight passengers and four crew members, considered the "birth of air-rescue in Switzerland", garnered worldwide publicity and led to the fictionalised account of Broken Journey. [7]
Sydney Box became head of production of Gainsborough Studios in 1946. He commissioned Robert Westerby, who had a reputation for writing contemporary thrillers, to do a script. Michael Balcon was also developing a film based on the same story, and registered an idea with the British Producers Association, but once he heard Box was doing a film as well he withdrew his project. [8]
Westerby did a treatment in six days, then proceeded to a full draft. He wrote a role specifically for Phyllis Calvert, then one of the studio's biggest stars. Calvert was reluctant to make the film but Box managed to persuade her. [8] It would be the last film Calvert made under her contract with Gainsborough. [9]
Ken Annakin had a background in documentary filmmaking and had just directed his first feature for Sydney Box, Holiday Camp (1947), so Box assigned the film to him. While Westeby wrote his script, Box sent Annakin out to Mount Blanc to look for possible locations and gave him funds to purchase an old Dakota airplane. [10]
When Annakin returned to London, Westerby had written a first draft in two weeks. Annakin said the script "read beautifully" with "twelve picturesque characters" who "all had what seemed to be interesting gimmicks, but when I got down to filming them, I found they were cardboard characters. No matter how neatly they were dovetailed into the plot, one didn’t care for them. It was a hard lesson I learned: never to trust a script which appears on the surface to be professionally written with flowery descriptions – but has no heart." [11] Annakin and Westerby rewrote the script to account for the locations the director had found but the director says he never fixed "this basic flaw" of the script. [12]
The film was originally called Rescue. [13]
The film was shot over 14 weeks in 1947. Calvert was only available for half that time. There was location filming in Switzerland with studio work at Shepherd's Bush. Gainsborough had just finished making a film in the Alps called Snowbound (1947) so Annakin could draw on their expertise for the best locations. [8] [14]
Filming was difficult due to the location and incidents such as the Dakota plane being torn apart several times by the mountain wind. Annakin's wife accompanied him on location and suffered a miscarriage. When filming took place back in the studio, London was having a heatwave and the actors had to perform wrapped up in snow gear, making it uncomfortable for them. Francis Sullivan had a minor heart attack. Annakin says that Margot Graham and Phyllis Calvert did not get along, "driven by the competitive star system of those days." He says both constantly requested changes to the script which he put down "badly written" scenes. A stuntman was injured performing a stunt for James Donald. [15]
Broken Journey was a commercial disappointment recording a loss of £63,900. [1] According to one set of records, the film earned producer's receipts of £91,300 in the UK and £41,800 overseas making a total of £133,100. Considering the budget was £197,000 it made a loss of £63,900. [2] This performance was attributed in part to the fact that the film came out 18 months after the accident which inspired it and was no longer topical. [8]
Broken Journey was critically received as a disaster film. Reviewer A.H. Weiler of The New York Times observed that the film was effective: "(an) intelligent script and a uniformly excellent cast serve to make the import a diverting entertainment. And, the rugged, spectacular mountain backgrounds are an added note of authenticity to the yarn which accents character study rather than melodramatics." The reviewer, however, had a caution that the film "which might have been a top-flight, thoroughly exciting excursion, is simply a meticulously-planned trip in which the travellers are more interesting than the itinerary." [16]
Kine Weekly wrote that the film: "opens spectacularly, but the main story, woven from the reactions of 13 oddly assorted people suddenly cut off from the outside world and faced with almost certain death, contains many theatrical characters and moments, and peters out without recapturing the realistic initial thrills. Done many times before inslightly different guises, its tangled tale is much more suited to the stage than screen. [17]
The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "This is a sentimental yet well-constructed film, each little tale being carefully co-ordinated, and each bit of life neatly dovetailed. There are moments of great beauty, such as when Romer recites a poem as a funeral oration over John's grave. This is poignant and gripping in the extreme. The mountain scenes are obviously accurate – they were taken in Haute-Savoie – and the photography is clear and good. The competent cast play intelligently. [18]
Steven H. Scheuer in Movies on TV, 1986–87 noted that the film was "tense, well acted melodrama." [19]
In British Sound Films: The Studio Years 1928–1959 David Quinlan rated the film as "average", writing: "Prototype disaster film has its moments." [20]
Leslie Halliwell said: "Unpersuasive and stagey melodrama which wastes some good talent." [21]
The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "A plane full of mismatched characters comes down in the Alps. Guess what happens next? Watching painfully earnest tales like this makes you wonder why anyone bothers with disaster movies, and why it took so long for Airplane! to come along and mock them. Director Ken Annakin, on his third picture, has little idea how to freshen up the stock situations, while there are few hidden depths in the overfamiliar characters." [22]
Miranda is a 1948 black and white British comedy film, directed by Ken Annakin and written by Peter Blackmore, who also wrote the play of the same name from which the film was adapted. The film stars Glynis Johns, Googie Withers, Griffith Jones, Margaret Rutherford, John McCallum and David Tomlinson. Denis Waldock provided additional dialogue. Music for the film was played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Muir Mathieson. The sound director was B. C. Sewell.
Swiss Family Robinson is a 1960 American adventure film starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran in a tale of a shipwrecked family building an island home. It was the second feature film based on the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, a previous adaptation having been released by RKO Pictures in 1940. Directed by Ken Annakin and shot in Tobago and Pinewood Studios outside London, it was the first widescreen Walt Disney Pictures film shot with Panavision lenses; when shooting in widescreen, Disney had almost always used a matted wide screen or filmed in CinemaScope.
Kenneth Cooper Annakin, OBE was an English film director.
Phyllis Hannah Murray-Hill, known professionally as Phyllis Calvert, was an English film, stage and television actress. She was one of the leading stars of the Gainsborough melodramas of the 1940s such as The Man in Grey (1943) and was one of the most popular movie stars in Britain in the 1940s. She continued her acting career for another 50 years.
Rob Roy: The Highland Rogue is a 1953 adventure film produced by RKO-Walt Disney British Productions which is about Rob Roy MacGregor. It was the last Disney film released through RKO Radio Pictures.
The Man in Grey is a 1943 British film melodrama made by Gainsborough Pictures; it is considered to be the first of a series of period costume dramas now known as the "Gainsborough melodramas". It was directed by Leslie Arliss and produced by Edward Black from a screenplay by Arliss and Margaret Kennedy that was adapted by Doreen Montgomery from the 1941 novel The Man in Grey by Eleanor Smith. The film's sets were designed by Walter Murton.
Here Come the Huggetts is a 1948 British comedy film, the first of the Huggetts series, about a working class English family. All three films in the series were directed by Ken Annakin and released by Gainsborough Pictures.
Bon Voyage! is a 1962 American comedy film directed by James Neilson and produced by Walt Disney Productions. It stars Fred MacMurray, Jane Wyman, Deborah Walley, Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran as the Willard family on a European holiday.
Trio is a 1950 British anthology film based on three short stories by W. Somerset Maugham: "The Verger", "Mr Know-All" and "Sanatorium". Ken Annakin directed "The Verger" and "Mr Know-All", while Harold French was responsible for "Sanatorium".
Third Man on the Mountain is a 1959 American family adventure film by Walt Disney Productions, directed by Ken Annakin and starring Michael Rennie, James MacArthur and Janet Munro. Set during the golden age of alpinism, its plot concerns a young Swiss man who conquers the mountain that killed his father. It is based on Banner in the Sky, a James Ramsey Ullman 1955 novel about the first ascent of the Citadel, and was televised under this name.
The Informers is a 1963 British crime film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Nigel Patrick, Margaret Whiting, Harry Andrews, Derren Nesbitt and Colin Blakely. It was produced by William MacQuitty, with screenplay by Paul Durst and Alun Falconer from the novel Death of a Snout by Douglas Warner. Cinematography was by Reginald H. Wyer. It was distributed in the UK by The Rank Organisation and the U.S. by Continental Film Distributors.
The Gainsborough melodramas were a sequence of films produced by the British film studio Gainsborough Pictures between 1943 and 1947 that conformed to a melodramatic style. The melodramas were not a film series but an unrelated sequence of films that had similar themes that were usually developed by the same film crew and frequently recurring actors who played similar characters in each. They were mostly based on popular books by female novelists and they encompassed costume dramas, such as The Man in Grey (1943) and The Wicked Lady (1945), and modern-dress dramas, such as Love Story (1944) and They Were Sisters (1945). The popularity of the films with audiences peaked mid-1940s when cinema audiences consisted primarily of women. The influence of the films led to other British producers releasing similarly themed works, such as The Seventh Veil (1945), Pink String and Sealing Wax (1945), Hungry Hill (1947), The White Unicorn (1947), Idol of Paris (1948), and The Reluctant Widow (1950) and often with the talent that made Gainsborough melodramas successful.
The Huggetts are a fictional family who appear in a series of British films which were released in the late 1940s by Gainsborough Pictures. The films centre on the character of Joe Huggett, played by Jack Warner, the head of a working class London family. Along with the Gainsborough melodramas, the Huggett films proved popular and lucrative for the studio. All four films were directed by Ken Annakin and produced by Betty E. Box.
Holiday Camp is a 1947 British comedy drama film directed by Ken Annakin, starring Flora Robson, Jack Warner, Dennis Price, and Hazel Court, and also features Kathleen Harrison and Jimmy Hanley. It is set at one of the then-popular holiday camps. It resonated with post-war audiences and was very successful. It was the first film to feature the Huggett family, who went on to star in "The Huggetts" film series.
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Double Confession is a 1950 British crime film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Derek Farr, Joan Hopkins, William Hartnell and Peter Lorre. The screenplay by William Templeton is based on the novel All On A Summer's Day by H.L.V. Fletcher, written under the pen name John Garden.
The Magic Bow is a 1946 British musical film based on the life and loves of the Italian violinist and composer Niccolò Paganini. It was directed by Bernard Knowles. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival.
Across the Bridge is a 1957 British thriller film directed by Ken Annakin and starring Rod Steiger, David Knight and Bernard Lee. It is based on the 1938 short story "Across the Bridge" by Graham Greene. According to his obituary, it was director Annakin's favourite film.
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Verity Films was a British documentary film production company, founded by Sydney Box and Jay Gardner Lewis in March or May 1940.