Volo nella bufera

Pilot Fred MacMurray likes the looks of Joan Bennett (which is the last plot point of this movie I enjoyed). He takes her flight to San Francisco. But there's been a jewel robbery, and she's tried to pay for her ticket with a ring. There are people who want the plane to get to San Francisco and people who don't and are willing to get mean about it. And pretty soon I didn't care much either way.

It's an okay flick directed by Mitchell Leisen, who was always good at the visuals in a movie, and could get a decent performance out of Fred MacMurray. Anyone could get a decent performance out of Fred MacMurray, since except for two movies directed by Billy Wilder, he played the same character in 86 movies and almost four hundred episodes of MY THREE SONS. The problem is that this movie reeks of it being Hollywood Danger During The Code Era, which means that good will triumph, everyone will live and MacMurray will get Joan Bennett. So since there are no good jokes -- Zasu Pitts is aboard the plane and I usually love her, but she's so annoying and whiny and futile that I was hoping she'd get shot -- I didn't care. We've seen the heroic people stranded in a plane a hundred times. John Farrow liked to make that movie a lot. We've seen Hollywood Danger and it's real, where people actually die -- think ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS. There the stakes are high and real. But this is only Hollywood Danger, so I didn't really care.