Desperate Journey

Director: Raoul Walsh Raoul Walsh

Overview

Errol Flynn are the on-screen spark plugs in this bracing propaganda yarn, which relies on the personalities of its casts as well as the lively direction of Raoul Walsh to overcome the improbabilities of its plot. In 1942, a lone RAF bomber flying deep into Germany (just inside the old Polish border) is shot down after completing its mission. The skipper is killed, and left in command is Flight Lieutenant Terry Forbes (Errol Flynn), an Australian who plans on leaving damage behind on the ground so the Germans remember him, even if he doesn't make it back to England. The rest of the crew consists of brash American bombardier Johnny Hammond (Ronald Reagan), bookish Canadian navigator Jed Forrest (Arthur Kennedy), wide-eyed Flight Sergeant Lloyd Hollis (Ronald Sinclair), the son of a World War I hero, and First World War veteran Kirk Edwards (Alan Hale, Sr.). They're captured in short order, and brought before Luftwaffe Major Otto Baumeister (Raymond Massey) for interrogation -- they not only manage to escape, but gather some information vital to the Allied war effort. Now they only have to figure out how to cross most of Germany and Holland, avoiding capture along the way by a mix of sheer daring, blind luck, and assistance from two anti-Nazi Germans (Nancy Coleman, Albert Bassermann) -- and just when it seems that all of the odds have turned against them, they find themselves faced with a German plot to wipe out a major part of London, and one last opportunity to get home.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/28/2020
UPC:	0883929712861
Original Release:	1942
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono, Dolby Digital Stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:48:00
Sales rank:	17,254

Special Features

Warner Night at the movies 1942 Short Subjects Gallery Vintage Newsreel; Oscar-Nominated Patriotic Short The Tanks Are Coming; Musical Shorts Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica School and The United State Army Air Force Band; Classic Cartoon The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall; Trailers of Desperate Journey and 1942's Murder in the Big House

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Errol Flynn	Flight Lt. Terrence Forbes
Ronald Reagan	Flying Officer Johnny Hammond
Raymond Massey	Maj. Otto Baumeister
Nancy Coleman	Kaethe Brahms
Arthur Kennedy	Flying Officer Jed Forrest
Sig Rumann	Preuss
Patrick O'Moore	Squadron Leader Lane-Ferris,Squadron Leader Lane Ferris
Ronald Sinclair	Flight Sgt. Lloyd Hollis
Louis Arco	Feldwebel Gertz
Charles Irwin	Capt. Coswick
Richard Fraser	S/L Clark
Lester Matthews	Wing Commander
Rudolph Anders	Kruse
Walter Brooke	Flight Sgt. Warwick
Harry Lewis	Evans
Albert Basserman	Dr. Mather,Frau Raeder
Felix Basch	Dr. Herman Brahms
Ilka Gruning	Frau Brahms
Henry Victor	Heinrich Schwartzmuller
Bruce Lester	Assistant Plotting Officer
Kurt Katch	Hesse
Helmut Dantine	German Copilot
Barry Bernard	Squadron Commander
William Hopper	Aircraftsman
Douglas Walton	British Officer
Harold Daniels	German Soldier
Henry Rowland	Motorcycle Scout
Walter Bonn	Sentry
Frank Alten	Lieutenant
Arno Frey	Pvt. Trecha
Sigfrid Tor	Pvt. Rasek
Gene Garrick	Polish Boy
Hans Schumm	Gestapo Agent
Robert Stephenson	Gestapo Agent
Carl Ekberg	Telephone Repairman
Lester Sharpe	Driver
Ludwig Hardt	Pharmacist
Jack Lomas	Magnus
Ferdinand Schumann-Heink	Sentry
Sven Hugo Borg	Mechanic
Roland Varno	Unteroffizier
Otto Reichow	Pvt. Koenig
Rolf Lindau	Sergeant
Don Phillips	Kenton
Alan Hale Jr.	Flight Sgt. Kirk Edwards
Bruce Lister	English Officer
Nancy Colman	Actor
Max Steiner	Composer

Technical Credits

Arthur T. Horman

Raoul Walsh	Director
Arthur T. Horman	Screenwriter
Jack Saper	Producer
Edwin DuPar	Special Effects
Byron Haskin	Special Effects
Nathan Levinson	Sound Effects
Hal Wallis	Producer
C.A. Riggs	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Desperate Journey is hardly among director Raoul Walsh's finest, or even his more important movies -- but it does illustrate precisely how important Walsh was to the Warner Bros. film making factory, and to Hollywood overall, and his basic worth as a director. True, with a good script and story, and a first-rate cast, he would work wonders, as with enduring classics such as High Sierra or The Roaring Twenties. Desperate Journey, with its improbability-laden script and story and stereotypical characters, was never going to be a classic, but in Walsh's hands the pacing and the performances are so brisk and breezy that we never have time to stop for breath, much less ponder the improbabilities we've seen -- and with the cast's strongest attributes brought to the fore, the result is a memorably enjoyable propaganda thriller with just the right mix of suspense, laughs, and patriotism; and even better for younger viewers, there's no time-out for romance, Nancy Coleman being the sole female character of any significance, and so serious a character that there's never a possibility of it, even with so handsome and debonaire a leading man as Errol Flynn (as well as a brash young Ronald Reagan) on hand. On a more serious critical level, the script needed work -- Raymond Massey's put-upon Luftwaffe major is, at times, incredibly stupid, as are (conveniently) virtually all of the Nazis with whom the heroes lock horns. Rather surprisingly, the script does go out of its way to mention the existence of anti-Nazi Germans, something that the British propaganda movies of the era, serving a population that had come under direct attack by the Germans, usually avoided. After Reagan became president in the 1980s, clips from Desperate Journey in which his character dons a German uniform turned up occasionally, shown very much out-of-context, courtesy of his detractors. Another factor also lost on modern viewers is precisely what a tonic this picture and those like it must have been in late 1942, especially on the American side of the Atlantic -- the US Eighth Air Force (then known officially as the VIII Bomber Command) had only begun regular bombings of German-held territory that summer, and with nothing like the numbers (or quality) of planes they would later muster; and the British, with their night bombings, were a long way from the thousand-bomber raids of late in the war, and far more prone to missing their targets than anyone wanted to admit. And here is a lone RAF plane depicted as nailing its target -- initially with the intention of doing so from high altitude . . . . Anyone with real knowledge of the air war (especially members of the US Army Air Forces and the RAF) must have winced and laughed to themselves, but audiences ate it up at home. And thanks to Walsh's pacing and the cast's boundless appeal, it's still a fun viewing experience.