By Lee Pfeiffer
Lafayette Escadrille, the final film of esteemed director William A. Wellman, comes to DVD through the Warner Archive. The B&W film's main point of interest is that it proved to be a rather inglorious close to an otherwise glorious career. Wellman, who directed the first Oscar-winning film Wings, wanted to pay homage to the Escadrille (pronounced "Escadree"), a unit of American flyers who fought for France prior to America's entrance into WWI. The volunteers were essentially the forerunners of the far better known Flying Tigers who fought on the side of China against Japan in the second world war. The men of the Lafayette Escadrille were considered national heroes in France and for years Wellman insisted he had served with them. He would later admit he had actually served in a less illustrious French flying unit. The movie, released in 1958, is an uneven, uninteresting bore that focuses on a handsome young man, Thad (Thad???) Walker, played by Tab Hunter, who joins the Escadrille in order to escape some problems with the law in America. His motivations for joining the Escadrille as opposed to, say the circus, are never even discussed, a plot hole that seems bizarre since Thad has absolutely no knowledge of planes or flying. He bonds well with his fellow American flyers in training, but soon his wayward ways result in him deserting. He shacks up with a a French prostitute, Renee (Etchika Choureau), with whom he falls madly in love. The two tire of their Paris love nest primarily because Thad can't risk being seen in public. Making matters more difficult, Thad doesn't speak French and Renee can't speak English, but, hey, when it comes to love, "Viva la difference!" Out of desperation, he takes a job pimping for a bordello but is shamed by this "career". When America enters the war, he spills his story to a sympathetic American general and - presto!- he is not only forgiven for desertion, but is allowed to fly for the U.S military as a sergeant. If all of sounds ridiculous, it plays even worse on the big screen. By the time Wellman lumbers to an impressive, but all-too brief dogfight sequence in the skies of France (photographed by the great William Clothier), you'll probably have nodded off an hour before.
Hunter may be impossibly good-looking, but makes for a bland leading man. The director tries to compensate for this by working in any number of scenes that require him to strut around without his shirt. Wellman's sense of period details also leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the Yanks sport contemporary late 1950s haircuts and speak in modern vernacular. The film's primary asset is that it provided an early showcase for some up-and-coming talents such as David Janssen, Tom Laughlin, Brett Halsey and Clint Eastwood, who is largely relegated to window dressing. Perhaps most brazenly, Wellman presents himself as a character in the Escadrille and he is portrayed by his son Bill Wellman Jr. (I'll bet he really had to sweat out the screen test for that role...) The movie also suffers from unconvincing studio sets and locations that don't remotely suggest France (the movie was shot entirely in California). Additionally, Wellman presents a series of dreadfully unfunny sequences in which the French characters are presented as idiots and buffoons and he seems to find it positively hilarious that these people don't speak English, even though they are in their native country. The story crawls to a presumably touching happy ending, but it emerges as possibly the least moving love story ever committed to films during this era.
Clint Eastwood fans will be happy the movie is available on DVD to fill a hole in their collections, but the average viewer will probably agree with the general perception of critics that the movie is a misguided story about flyers that never gets off the ground.
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