Take a look (and read the accompanying explanation) at yesterday’s blog entry. It’s a World War 2 pilot training film ”Learn and Live With Joe Instructor’, absolutely one of the most entertaining war movies ever made. To my dismay, the film ended rather abruptly, halting just as a plane was
Years ago I remember my father recounting to me a training film he and his fellow flight school students were asked (forced) to watch in which Guy Kibbee played an angel who admitted dead student pilots to a special place in heaven/hell, without knowing why. The flight instructor showed up
On Monday I posted a British Pathe newsreel showing the local side of glamorous Rome in 1967. Although the twitty English announcers narration was a tad on the condescending side (more than a tad actually) the lovely color photography made the whole thing a delight to watch. Today we have
What have we here? It’s a 1967 British Pathe newsreel (really? they were still making newsreels in Britain?) showing us ‘The Real Rome’. The quality of the color photography is excellent and the musical score is quite perfect. And then there’s the narration which is an astonishingly stupid and snide
Recorded on May 26, 1927, just five days after Lindbergh’s arrival in Paris, ‘Lucky Lindy’ (posted below) was a major hit record and one that Lindbergh apparently loathed. He was more than a little surprised at the world-wide hoopla that greeted him upon landing and regarded much of it with
There;’s a saying in aviation that ‘taking off is optional but landing is mandatory. Yesterday I posted Charles Lindberghs take off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island for his historic Atlantic crossing. Today, above, we see his landing in France. It’s not the most graceful three-point landing you’ll ever see–the
Yesterday I read a large chunk of Scott Berg’s magnificent biography of Charles Lindbergh (rather appropiately on a plane) and discovered that the actual take-off of ‘The Spirit Of St. Louis’ was captured by newsreel cameras. It’s hard now to grasp, from a centuries distance, how special this event was
Here’s some remarkable colorized footage of the post-World War I remains of Flanders taken from the air in an open Bi-Plane. The colorization and sound bed (vintage airplane noise of course) give it a hauntingly realistic sense. Much as grainy old black and white footage has its own eerie charm,
A couple of months ago I posted about Howard Hawks 1939 movie ‘Only Angels Have Wings’. The discussion largely centered on the magnificent aerial photography by Elmer Dyer. It turns out that the Criterion Collection has included the film in their august DVD pantheon of classic cinema and provided a
Celebrate the season of the arrival of public domain with Springtime (1929)! This early Walt Disney Silly Symphonies animated short film is a exploration of nature set entirely to classical music. The cartoon features flora and fauna, including charming flowers, busy ladybugs, crawling centipedes, soaring birds, and hopping frogs. Without