Strategic Air Command (1955)

The greatest movie ever made..!

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I first saw this movie while I was in the Air Force in the SAC. This movie was like going to work. The movie itself, not a bad movie. It is watchable and the language and the demeanor of the characters is pretty realistic, like the guy being p@#$ off he had to give up his business career because he was re-activated! I was in SAC in the '80s and they stopped using the B-52 as their function in the '50s as a SAC bomber because the SAC missiles were less costly and were ICBMs. The B-36 can be found at some air museums if you are interested. To get a taste of this movie go to an Air Force base still flying B-52s, which I think reside in Barksdale AFB. SAC was hard a#$@% as the Air Force got and many were glad to leave and/or transfer to other non-SAC air bases!

Interesting story of Dutch Holland (James Stewart) and his wife (June Allyson) and their involvement with the Strategic Air Command of the U.S. Air Force in the post-war years. Holland, an ex bomber pilot, is now a successful third baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals and has just signed a contract for seventy thousand bucks. His career is interrupted when the Air Force activates his reserve status and he's hauled back in for 21 months. Holland has a lot of catching up to do but learns to love flying the huge B-36 and then the slim B-47. He's a good officer and reenlists, which perturbs his wife, but a bad shoulder forces him out of the Air Force and, presumably, he goes back to baseball as a coach or manager.The movie is practically a recruitment film for the Strategic Air Command, promoting self sacrifice for the sake of a nation on the brink of war. The incidents we witness are familiar from earlier war movies. All that's missing is the war itself.June Allyson plays June Allyson, the steadfast, common-sense wife, who endorses Stewart's first hitch but balks at the second. Some sit-com humor is gotten out of their adjustment to military life. They move from a prosperous-looking home into a standard typical spare functional monochromatic generic Monopoly Air Force house. The re-introduction to military routine is played for some sarcasm too. Stewart has gone for a medical check up but he's late. "Well, honey, they go over you from head to foot here, and they've only gotten down to my throat." There is the requisite cigar-chomping tough general, modeled after the brave but reckless Curtis LeMay who ran SAC at the time. The tedium of being checked out on various airplanes is omitted. And there is a soaring score by Victor Young that almost adds lift to the wings of those stone-heavy B-36s.Interesting airplanes, B-36s. The largest combat airplane ever produced. As in a training film, the story guides us through the vast interior of this machine, crowing a bit over the 80-foot-long "Holland Tunnel" that connects the fore and aft compartments. The thing was a dinosaur, of course, designed during WWII to deliver bombs from the US to Germany in case Britain fell, slow, ungainly and obsolescent almost from the beginning. The B-47 represented a new paradigm -- twice as fast and with a crew of only three men. And the B-36s replacement, the B-52, has had a service life of half a century. There are also a few proud shots of Globemaster transports, huge things, seen swallowing an 18-wheeler whole from its open maw, like a python swallowing a shoat. It seems impossible.Gorgeous shots of airplanes in flight. (In fact, the photography, by seasoned pro William H. Daniels, is superb.) Seeing this spacious bomber fly from Texas to Alaska and back without refueling generates a desire to be aboard. There's even a built-in coffee station. Maybe glazed donuts with sprinkles.I've seen it twice and enjoyed it both times despite the stereotypical script. The airplanes make the rest of it worthwhile.

OK, so it's not perfect... So, you could guess the "trite" plot, etc...Is that wrong? It seems so many times, "fans" tend to rip apart films, especially "old" films. I find that most members of the younger generations--and some other "experts" (I was born in 64) tend to "rag" on films like this. They tend to compare them to the more "realistic" things that Hollywood is cranking out now. To truly appreciate a film like this, or "Twelve O Clock High", or "The Bridges at Toko-Ri", you must put yourself in the "frame of mind" of those who made the film and those who watched the film AT THAT TIME, and, too, the EVENTS THAT WERE GOING ON. (Too bad most young people spend their time playing video games or watching something as trivial as today's NFL.) Only THEN can you TRULY appreciate what the makers were trying to say. This seems to be a problem with Hollywood now, as they are continuing to remake older films (The Day the Earth Stood Still) because, I guess, the original version is too "trite" and "predictable".WHAT !!!!!!!!!!!!Sorry, got carried away. Yes, this movie has FANTASTIC footage of the B-36 and the B-47, but, it is a fine movie in it's own right. Yes, it IS a bit of a flag-waver, but what else would you expect from the fine people who made this and were in the film. And, you don't need to be a "flag-waver" to enjoy it! I'm not!

While Strategic Air Command may seem terribly dated today, in the 1950's, the B-36 and B-47's depicted in the movie were the height of technology. This movie is one of two Air Force recruiting films that Hollywood made (the other was Bombers B-52 with Karl Malden and Natalie Wood a few years later).The plot is somewhat trite, as others have noted. But, that isn't the point of the movie. The purpose of the movie was to help enlistments into SAC, and to reassure a nervous public about the strength of our nuclear deterrent. This was before ICBM's and submarine launched missiles could destroy a city within minutes of launch.The best part of the whole movie is the rare footage of the B-36. This airplane could stay aloft for over 24 hours without refueling. It was initially designed in the early 1940's when it looked like England might fall, meaning we would have to bomb Germany from bases in the US.There is about a five-minute sequence of the B-36 in flight, plus a guided tour. For airplane buffs, this is pure nirvana. This movie isn't for everyone, but if you like airplanes and want to see a slice of history, watch at least the first half.