The Flight of the Phoenix [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Robert Aldrich Robert Aldrich

Overview

Based on Elleston Trevor's novel, The Flight of the Phoenix opens with a well-staged plane crash in the middle of the Sahara desert. The pilot (James Stewart) and the navigator (Richard Attenborough) do their best to maintain order among the survivors, a group of oil men not well-suited for survival in the desert wastes. Some of those who appear to be the most resourceful reveal themselves to be inept or cowardly, while other less prepossessing types -- notably bespectacled Standish (Dan Duryea) -- demonstrate surprising inner reserves of strength. The ultimate fate of the survivors rests in the hands of Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger), who uses the wreckage of the old plane to design a new one. The Flight of the Phoenix was dedicated to the memory of veteran stunt pilot Paul Mantz, who was killed while filming the take-off scene of the new plane.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/22/2022
UPC:	0715515269612
Original Release:	1965
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	2:22:00
Sales rank:	8,966

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

James Stewart	Frank Townes
Peter Finch	Captain Harris
Richard Attenborough	Lew Moran
Hardy Krüger	Heinrich Dorfmann
Ernest Borgnine	Trucker Cobb
Ian Bannen	Crow
Ronald Fraser	Sgt. Watson
Christian Marquand	Dr. Renaud
Dan Duryea	Standish
George Kennedy	Bellamy
Gabriele Tinti	Gabriele
Alex Montoya	Carlos
Peter Bravos	Tasso
William Aldrich	Bill
Barrie Chase	Farida
Stanley Ralph Ross	Arab Singer

Technical Credits

Robert Aldrich	Director,Producer
L.B. Abbott	Special Effects
Howard Lydecker	Special Effects

Editorial Reviews

An all-star cast attempts a feat just this side of implausible in The Flight of the Phoenix, a taut disaster movie set in the Saharan desert. As the pilot whose arrogance dooms a dozen men to sandy purgatory, Jimmy Stewart embodies an old-school flying philosophy that butts up against the modern design concepts of a priggish German. The fact that the disagreeable German is most often correct, and Stewart the American is pig-headed and irascible, is novelist Elleston Trevor's acknowledgment of the shifting power dynamics in the international scientific community, as well as the arrival of a new brand of post-war leader. Lukas Heller's adaptation of Trevor's novel is a real slow burn, unfolding over 148 smartly paced minutes of these men coming apart at the seams, sometimes literally -- as part of a visceral makeup scheme by Ben Nye Sr., the harsh desert exposure leaves the men pocked with open sores, their loose flaps of skin peeling off like paint from the side of a house. The movie foreshadows the wave of star-studded disaster films that would come along in the 1970s, most notably in its clever opening credits sequence. The names of the who's who cast appear -- Richard Attenborough, Peter Finch, Ernest Borgnine -- and the camera freeze-frames on each panicked face as the plane descends toward earth. The characters' most basic instincts are exposed under the dire conditions that follow, and these delineate into the broad character types at the core of a good disaster film. It's a tribute to Robert Aldrich's film that courage is not always rewarded -- nor cowardice punished -- according to Hollywood's usual standards of justice. Alternately theatrical and grounded, for want of a better word, The Flight of the Phoenix is tense entertainment.

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