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American flier learns what World War II is about, 15 July 2007

Author: doslobos from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Robert Stack makes a pretty good typically brash young American who joins the Eagle Squadron (a unit of American fliers within the British RAF) for all the typically wrong reasons. He meets a beautiful WAAF officer played by Diana Barrymore, who has a different, more adult view of the war against Nazi Germany. At the time of the film it was basically an air war. Britain was being heavily bombed and the Eagle Squadron fliers (and of course the rest of the RAF) were fighting back.

The motion picture is typically campy — mostly deliberate "high" camp. Stack's character would probably have called some of it "corny."

But it is an important picture for the same reason that many of World War II films, many of them not much above the B movie level — many in it — are because it can teach the viewer something about the people who watched the film(s) at or near the times of issue. A very large percentage of the population of this country watched motion pictures of this type and most realized that some at least were pretty campy and most, if they involved Americans in important roles, reflected a somewhat higher standard than most of us, who although professing it, could attain.

Many in the 1940s believed that World War II was a fight — the fight — for freedom; a fight, in the language the day, to make the world safe for democracy. Surprisingly, when viewed from this distance, many people believed that and some in fact still do.

Our hero — a very young Robert Stack — eventually figures all all out. No comment here on just how he does it.

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