Island in the Sky (1953)

Overrated and overhyped

just watch it!

Absolutely Fantastic

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

For professional pilots, their planes are their island in the sky. Capt. Dooley (John Wayne) pilots his military transport plane. He and his crew are traveling back across the Atlantic. Off the coast of Labrador, icing forces him to land. The survivors struggle in the frozen north as his friends scramble to search for him.The movie tries a few jokey scenes which are too broad and ill-fitting. Around half of the movie is spent on the search party. I would have preferred more John Wayne in a John Wayne movie. As for the crash site, I'm guessing it was filmed up in the Californian mountains. It doesn't look cold or threatening enough other than those scenes where they bring out the wind machine. It would help to see their breath in the air. There should be more tension although the search is fairly compelling. This works for the most part.

Island in the Sky is directed by William A. Wellman and adapted by Ernest K. Gann from his own novel of the same name. It stars John Wayne, Lloyd Nolan, James Arness, Andy Devine, Harry Carey Junior, James Lydon, Hal Baylor, Sean McClory, Wally Cassell and Allyn Joslyn. Music is by Emil Newman and cinematography by Archie Stout and William H. Clothier.Captain Dooley (Wayne) and the rest of the crew of the Douglas C-3 Skytrain are forced to emergency land in an icy unchartered section of Labrador, Canada. While waiting and hoping for rescue, the men have to suffer hunger and extreme winter conditions. But as the rescue team formed back at ATH soon finds out, locating the stricken men will not be easy, thus the days start to tick by...Long out of circulation due to legal issues, Island in the Sky came out of the clouds in 2005 to be rightly reappraised. It's a film that is very much a mixed bag yet easy to recommend to classic movie fans.Tech credits are near exemplary, with Stout, Clothier and Wellman really making this something of an aviation themed essential. The cast, too, are almost across the board impressive with the principals each contributing something of worth to the story, and while Newman's score is not for everyone, it pitches the blends just right for dramatic and emotional worth. However, much of the drama is shunted off the runway by cutaways to scenes of pointless comedy relief, flashbacks that do nothing but take you out of the human survival interest and the narration tool is badly used. Yet with an air of authenticity about the portrayal of the search and rescue operation, the men under survival circumstance dynamic at film's core, picture comes out in credit to defy its obvious flaws. 7/10

I can't imagine why this film is not more widely known, or more highly valued. I finally caught up with it a couple of years ago on DVD, and was absolutely blown away. This is not only one of the Duke's best performances, it's a tense, entertaining film of rather eerie beauty.The basics seem familiar enough. A transport plane has to put down in the snowy wilds of Northern Quebec. We follow both the desperate search efforts, and the hopeless fight for survival of the frostbitten crew. Wayne is anything but his usual sterling self: irrational, angry, frustrated. The other parts are filled very effectively by square-jawed regulars, including James Arness, Lloyd Nolan and Andy Devine.But the real star is the sense of silent, snowy isolation. The title says it all: this film really makes you feel lost on a frozen island surrounded by empty, barren sky. It makes you feel the sense of hopelessness, knowing just how tiny the odds are of being found. And it does this in a subtle, understated way, almost like a film noir, without the pat melodramatics of the following year's The High and the Mighty. This film shows tough, experienced airmen behaving just about as you'd expect, while keeping the real focus on the detail of the rescue flights. Because, above all, Island in the Sky is a film about flying and fliers.Director William Wellman probably deserves the lion's share of the credit. He's not exactly a household name any more, but he was one of the most reliable directors in Hollywood. There's no Wellman signature style, as such - but films like Yellow Sky, Across the Wide Missouri, The Ox-Bow Incident, even the silent Wings, all bear a similar feeling of solidity, of efficient storytelling in the best Hollywood manner.It's amazing to read some of the derogatory reviews that have been posted. As a sometime pilot myself, I find the film more than credible enough. Sure, it rounds off some of the corners, but then it's an early-1950s Hollywood entertainment, not a 21st Century documentary, and works perfectly on its own level. (Far, FAR better than The High and the Mighty, which is resolved by the copilot encouraging the pilot to do something idiotically dangerous, for which in real life they would both surely have been grounded, IF they survived, which they probably wouldn't.)Equally surprising are some of the complaints about continuity. This film uses real aircraft, and must have been an enormous logistical challenge for Wayne's production company. No, it's not absolutely seamless by the standards of today's $200 million productions. But it is internally consistent and beautifully evocative, which should be more than enough for anyone.Island in the Sky is gripping, thought-provoking and kind of mystical, in its own unique way. It reminds me of the films of Val Lewton - a Hollywood 'formula' entry that manages to soar unforgettably beyond the limitations its genre.

As one of the characters observes during ISLAND IN THE SKY, it's even harder to be "lost" on an island in the frozen sky than bobbing on a raft near a welcoming isle in the balmy waters of the South Pacific. Specifically, he's referring to the Canada of the 1940s--before satellite mapping--when all of the land north of Montreal showed up as "Terra Incognito" on the charts of the day. Experiencing severe icing problems and not being able to pinpoint his geographical position, Captain Dooley (John Wayne), pilot of a five-man crew, manages to set his transport plane down hundreds of miles beyond any known landmark on a frozen lake. Unfortunately, his radio barely works, his crew only has food to last a few days, their hunting rifles are useless with no sign of animal life within walking distance, and a storm is coming on. Meanwhile, a four-plane search team comprised of Dooley's fellow transport pilots takes to the air in a race against time. As setbacks mount, this film seems headed toward a SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC-type ending (see Charles Frend's 1948 directorial effort, with John Mills in the title role of Robert Falcon Scott). Temperatures here are given as MINUS 40 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's not adjusting downwards for the windchill factor. Brrrrrrr, that's cold!