Motion Picture Reviews (1939)

Eight MOTION PICTURE REVIEWS and flying. It has a colorful and authentic background because much of it was photographed at the U. S. Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida, and at the West Coast Naval Air Base, North Island near San Diego, California. Prospective pilots will be thrilled by the actual inside shots of the new PBY-2 flying destroyers and by the spectacle of hundreds of patrol bombers, pursuit and training planes and many larger ships flying in formation. The scenes of students in action give a taste of what navy training means, its routine, its thrills as well as its dangers. The story itself has been told before. It concerns the rivalry of two brothers in work and in love, but it is less important than the romance of flying, the intensive training the students undergo, and the hazardous tests they must pass in order to win their valued wings. It is stunningly photographed with shots of formation flights, blind flying, and test flights which are emotionally thrilling. While it is a propaganda film in the sense of arousing enthusiasm for defense by air, it does not touch on the subject of actual or possible war, but as the dedication states, it glorifies the men who “in peace time are giving up their lives to maintain and improve our greatest safeguard against war — a powerful Navy — a powerful fighting force “The Wings of the Navy.” Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 1 2 Excellent Depends on taste — long and noisy ❖ YOUTH MARCHES ON O O Two reels. The breezy wholesomeness of this unpretentious film is most refreshing and heartening. While it is recognizable as bearing the stamp of the Oxford Group philosophy, particularly the thought that a better world would result if each individual would deliberately seek a better way of life, its Thesis is universally appealing. The message is delivered pleasingly and is illustrated by the spiritual awakening that came to various youths when they spent some weeks together at The New Empire Camp. The production is frankly amateurish but its sincerity is the more apparent on that account. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Very good Good SHORT SUBJECTS POWER O O Written and narrated by Frank Whitbeck. M.-G.-M. The Colorado River and a certain local project currently known as Boulder Dam are used to prove that movies are your best entertainment. Starting with a grateful acknowledgment to the Department of the Interior, some rather overpowering statistics, and instructive photographs of the river, the dam and the power plants, the picture follows the electric current into the hands of a technical staff at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Here electricity illuminates excerpts from that studio’s about-to-be released pictures. As a catalogue of future bookings, it may be informative but as a vehicle of instruction it is as disappointing as a side-show that doesn’t live up to the eloquence of the barker. Adolescents, 12 to 16 Children, 8 to 12 Yes Yes