In the forthcoming collection Ealing Revisited (available to pre-order on Amazon here: http://tiny.cc/60qfhw), Robert Murphy describes The Man in the
Sky as a film any national cinema should be proud of. Yet this film is
rarely listed among the greats of Ealing’s oeuvre, never mind that of British
cinema more generally. While I’m not going to summarise Murphy’s opinion here (you’ll
have to read the book for that), I do want to consider how the film sits within
broader ideas of what Ealing Studios were capable of, and whether that shifted
in the final ‘Ealing Films’ made in association with MGM in 1956-8.
One of the most striking changes to this film is the
shift out of the London streets and into a more suburban landscape: here, the new
houses and outskirts of Wolverhampton. Rather than the bomb-strewn locations of
Hue & Cry (1947) or The Blue Lamp (1950), these are clean
and character-less avenues; in place of the community and support of It Always Rains on Sunday (1947) or Lease of Life (1954), we have an absent neighbour, a local
laundrette and a shop selling flying saucers and spaceship toys. That is not to
say there is no community in the film, but the workers of Conway Aero
Manufacturing (who arguably best fill that role) are literally onlookers,
commentators, always outside and never part of the drama. That community is also
a professional one, to which John Mitchell (Jack Hawkins) belongs, but which
has little place for his wife Mary (Elizabeth Sellars). In that sense, the film
mirrors the work/home life split seen in Ealing’s other 1956 Hawkins film, The Long Arm (1956).
The storyline here is simple but potent: John Mitchell is
a test pilot at Conway’s, which is going to go bankrupt if they don’t secure a lucrative
new contract. During a routine test of the new plane, an engine fire causes Mitchell
to order everyone to parachute to safety, but he decides to stay onboard,
knowing that losing the plane will definitely sink Conway. In an Earthbound precursor
of Apollo 13, the ground crew and
Mitchell struggle to find a way for him to land the plane safely. Mitchell
circles the field for 30 minutes; below, his wife and colleagues watch and
wait...
The first element that is striking about the film is its
desire to tell the story in real time. The first and third are partially compressed,
but the second act is wholly in real time, as Mitchell circles the airfield. (dialogue
exchanges and well-placed clocks attest to the real time element) Hawkins is
particularly strong here: isolated in the plane set, and with only occasional
(and often one-sided) dialogue exchanges, he has to convey Mitchell’s stubborn,
scared and uncertain emotions, and convince the audience the character would be
committed enough to see this unlikely flight through. Given the brisk nature of
the visual storytelling in the opening of the film (in 12 minutes we learn
about the Mitchell family, meet their children, understand the financial
pressure they’re under, meet the team at Conway, get introduced to seven or
eight supporting characters, and then we’re up in the plane), director Crichton
pulls that pace back, and allows the film to linger on Hawkins’ face (or one of
the other characters), to rely on performance to propel the story along.
The second striking element is the performance of
Elizabeth Sellars, whose Mary Mitchell is as close to breaking point in the
domestic sphere as her husband is up in the air. This may be billed as a story
about the man in the sky (my own narrative recap above focused almost wholly on
this aspect), but it is clear that the woman in the house is also holding an
increasingly shaky and unwieldy machine together, and the Mitchell marriage becomes
the main problem the film has to solve. True, the film initially paints that
problem in broad strokes (notably their inability to buy a new dream house),
but it continues to cut back to Mary during the airborne drama (of which she is
blithely unaware until close to the landing) and emphasises her perspective on
the Mitchell’s lives. That the marriage is the main issue is also clear given
that John’s (successful) landing occurs almost 15 minutes before the film ends,
with the remaining time largely given over to a Hawkins-Sellars confrontation
about his apparently suicidal decision on the plane, and their future life. It
is a conversation that can seem one-sided, given John physically and verbally
dominates it (Hawkins flirts with playing John as a bully here), but the camera
often comes back to Sellar’s face while John continues his stern but blustering
defence of his decisions (and refutes Mary’s belief he wanted to kill himself).
Although this ends with John justifying himself and agreeing to buy their dream
house, the visual focus on Mary (and her scenes throughout) suggests it remains
open-ended, a papering over of the cracks, rather than a long-term solution.
The desire to play the drama through performance as much
as dialogue or event, also reveal the visual strengths of the film: Crichton
and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe use deep focus shots in places, particularly
when shooting the crowds who gather on the airfield (often shooting down from
the tower, with characters in fore- and background action clearly in focus); there
is a playfulness around some compositions (the crowd running back and forth
across the horizontal length of the frame to keep the plane in sight as it goes
behind buildings) and a simplicity to others (the plane, isolated in the sky, while
everyone stands together on the ground); while they favour a slow zoom into
close-up on characters faces to emphasise emotional shifts (including a shot
near the end of Hawkins in the bathroom, just after Mary has accused John of not
thinking of the family: the frame pushes closer and closer in on him, and we
see him snap)
With nice character moments scattered throughout (the
reporter who is told this is only a story if the plane crashes, Conway being
promised the contract if it lands, the tea ladies who complain no one is buying
their tea because they’re staring at the sky), and some impressive sound design
(the creaking and shrieking noises of the tortured plane make it sound alive in
the central sequences), this remains a fascinating film, and one that should be
better known among the Ealing canon.
[The Man in the Sky
is available on DVD from Studio Canal UK. See www.studiocanal.co.uk for more details]
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