The High and the Mighty

For The High and the Mighty, director William Wellman made a point of using Cinemascope to heighten the dramatic content of a confined screen space -- in this instance, the cockpit of a plane in flight. Copilot Dan Roman (John Wayne) seems a lot more in control of things than Captain John Sullivan ...more

The High and the Mighty has aged well -- seeing it anew in 2005, twenty-some years after it was last shown publicly, it's possible to pick out scenes and shots that might be cut or shortened, but ultimately it's not much more than a few minutes longer than it might ideally have been, even based on modern sensibilities; and, yes, parts of the Dimitri Tiomkin score are much more romantic than audiences are accustomed to in movies today. But otherwise, there's not much glaringly out-of-date in the ...more