A
film review by Glenn Erickson for DVDSavant.com on July 5, 2005.
Twelve O'Clock High was one of the first
movies after WWII to revisit that conflict with a new perspective. Hollywood
gave the country a few years to decompress, with the idea that audiences would
be sick of the war-themed fare that had dominated screens for four years. A
superior drama, this story of the pressure of command isn't limited to the
rigors of combat - anybody managing a lot of people to get a tough job done
will understand the stress factors involved.
The
film was nominated for several Oscars including Best Picture, and won for
Supporting Actor and Sound. But its highest approval rating came from veterans
who acknowledged that it was both respectful of the sacrifice of American
flyers and accurate in its portrayal of the experience of the B-17 bombing
squadrons stationed in England.
Brigadier
General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck)
has already finished his flying duty and is serving as a wing staffer under
Major General Pritchard (Millard
Mitchell). He recommends that Col. Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill), commander of a hard
luck outfit be relieved of his command for identifying too closely with his
men to make mission success his first priority. Frank's reward is to take over
the command himself, which means skipping Davenport's nice guy tactics. He ruthlessly makes it known that sentiment will
have no place in the new order, and among other unpopular decisions picks out a
flyer with a poor record, Ben R. Gately (Hugh
Marlowe), as a scapegoat. He slowly wins over his command and faces up to a
wholesale transfer mutiny from his
pilots, while pursuing Pritchard's elusive goal of maximum effort.
Twelve O'Clock High isn't just a war
adventure; we actually see only one bombing mission, presented (as a text title
proudly proclaims) exclusively through real aerial battle footage from both Allied
and Axis combat cameramen. Sy Bartlett
and Beirne Lay Jr.'s script starts
out much tougher than any other flying film to date, with the gruesome
aftermath of a mission in which a beloved pilot got the back of his head shot
off. He went nuts instead of dying, and had to be restrained forcibly while the
damaged plane limped back home.
Veterans
liked the tough attitude taken toward one of the war's strangest combat
experiences. Pilots left the relative safety of their English camps for daily
raids over Europe in broad daylight (the British did the night flying). They
suffered heavy losses without seeing much in the way of concrete results, and
many returned with devastating injuries. A B-17 bombing raid has been compared
to a baseball game in which the team always performs perfectly, staying cool
and doing their jobs. Only blind luck would decide who would come back intact
and who would be shot to bits or felled by a lucky flak hit. It doesn't take
long for the players to lose their desire to take to the field.
Twelve O'Clock High takes on the issue
of leadership under extraordinary circumstances. General Savage has the
authority to harass and humiliate as well as reward his men, and knows he must
find a way to motivate them to do their jobs - this is one WWII movie that
doesn't assume that every soldier wakes up each day saluting the flag and
happily going off to risk his life. A heavily-decorated flyer named Bishop (Robert Patten) is one of the first to
say he doesn't know what it's all for, that he just wants out.
Davenport's
nice guy approach is shown to have
severe flaws. His men love him but the energy of the unit is directed toward
personal loyalty instead of the missions. The film implies that this soft approach invites slack performance
when a stupid error by Davenport's navigator costs the wing five planes.
Instead of busting the navigator or transferring him, Davenport protects the
poor goof and backs him up. Frank Savage thinks that the pilots aren't going to
be happy flying under the guy's direction, and that Davenport is putting one
man ahead of the entire unit. As they say in the corporate boardroom, a little
housecleaning is in order.
It's
still debatable if tougher leadership can keep mistakes from happening. Perhaps
a constant threat of demotion will make the navigator recheck his figures, or
just make more mistakes.
Savage's
hardball approach gets results by challenging each man to do his best, through
both pride and fear. Ben Gately's humiliation is so severe he has little choice
but to bear down and prove his S.O.B. commander wrong, which he does. Savage
lessens the unit's likelihood of making bad decisions for sentimental reasons
by having all roommate assignments changed. To win the approval of his pilots
(and to keep their threatened mutiny
from grounding the whole bomber wing), Savage flies more missions himself,
proving he's willing to take the same risks.
The
squadron turns around, winning approval upstairs while establishing the
viability of daylight strategic bombing (also debatable, depending on which
analyst one reads). An element of valor creeps in as Savage's ground staff
disobeys orders and sneaks aboard aircraft for mission joyrides. Savage wants to bust young clerk Sgt. McIlhenny (Robert Arthur) until he finds out that
the kid is a natural gunner and shot down two enemy planes his first time out.
Savage finally wins the approval of his pilots by disobeying a recall order and
pressing on with the mission anyway: They obviously like his show of guts.
But
there's a price to be paid as Savage becomes more popular. He can't face the
fact that he's used Gately as a squadron motivational
tool, and it starts to get lonely when his own closest buddies are lost
over enemy territory, and he has to pretend he doesn't care. Davenport warns
him that there's more than one way for a commanding officer to crack up, and
Savage may be heading in that direction.
Twelve O'Clock High's cast earned high
praise. Gregory Peck was nominated as Best Actor for the fourth time in five
years while Dean Jagger won a
Supporting Oscar with his first and only nomination. Among the other able cast
members, one of the top winners was Hugh Marlowe in a role that won him a Fox
contract and five years of constant movie work, although he became sidetracked
as ineffectual supporting players and unlikeable villains (Night and the City, The Day the Earth Stood Still).
A
great many WWII movies now seem in questionable taste or too eager to glamorize
the wrong elements of combat. Twelve
O'Clock High retains an air of unassailable integrity.
Nowadays
we can't see Twelve O'Clock High and
not think about what it says about business practices. You don't have to be in
a company or corporate situation long these days to be confronted with war-like
workload stress. Absolute loyalty is demanded, as if the company goals (often
ill-defined in mushy Mission Statements one is supposed to take as gospel) were
as important as a war effort. One is expected to keep one's mind on immediate
work, stay tightly within the management structure in all things and say
nothing about business to outsiders. More often than not, the loyalty is all
one-way: The company demands more while expecting the employee to be grateful
for less. After all, you're lucky to have
a job.
It's
interesting how many of the same situations and motivational tactics in Twelve O'Clock High are a part of our
work experience. Haven't we all seen a nice
guy or buddy to his employees
person disappear in favor of someone who puts bottom-line ambitions ahead of
employee welfare? It's only natural. The difference is that in wartime
draconian measures can be justified because people's lives are at stake. Modern
workers are expected to make similar sacrifices just to polish the performance
record of executives who may never give them the time of day. No wonder workers
crack up and executives break the law; the pressure can just get to be too
much. [Erickson’s rating: **** out of 4 stars]
Labels:
drama, flying, WWII
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