{"id":2071,"date":"2024-08-05T19:36:50","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T19:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=2071"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:25:03","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:25:03","slug":"airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/05\/airport\/","title":{"rendered":"Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Airport <\/strong>(1970)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 137 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated G (some mild language and violence, mature themes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: George Seaton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: George Seaton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Alfred Newman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 29, 1970 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Dana Wynter, Lloyd Nolan, Barbara Hale, Gary Collins, John Findlater, Jessie Royce Landis, Larry Gates, Peter Turgeon, Whit Bissell, Virginia Grey.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $100.5M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0This is it, the one that started the disaster movie trend of the 70s. It was always one of my favorite film cycles. It still is. There\u2019s a great deal of fun to be had with a dopey movie that drops an all-star cast into a life-threatening catastrophe like an overturned ship, burning building or airplane in jeopardy. It then becomes a question of who will make it out alive and who won\u2019t. These movies also had cool posters. Most of them had a line of little boxes near the bottom with the main actors\u2019 faces in them. To me, that is the height of disaster movie coolness.<\/p>\n

\u00a0ANYWAY, if not for the success of Airport<\/strong>, based on the best seller by Arthur Hailey, we wouldn\u2019t have The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno or Earthquake. Written and directed by George Seaton (Miracle on 34th<\/sup> Street), it\u2019s one of the first movies to cross the $100 million mark at the box office. It\u2019s basically Grand Hotel in the skies. It follows a cross-section of characters during a snowstorm at Chicago\u2019s Lincoln International Airport. The night starts off with a plane getting stuck in the snow on one of the runways. Airport manager Mel Bakersfield (Lancaster, Birdman of Alcatraz) is forced to work overtime to deal with the situation. This puts more tension on his already troubled marriage to Cindy (Wynter, Invasion of the Body Snatchers). As divorce is imminent, he\u2019s been developing a relationship with customer relations agent Tanya Livingston (Seberg, Breathless). On top of that, he also has to deal with an elderly stowaway, Ada Quonsett (Hayes, Anastasia), who\u2019s been getting free rides for years.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Mel\u2019s brother-in-law Vernon Demerest (Martin, Ocean\u2019s 11) is scheduled to co-pilot a non-stop flight to Rome to evaluate Captain Harris (Nelson, The Shining). He\u2019s secretly having an affair with the chief stewardess Gwen (Bisset, Bullitt) who informs him before takeoff that she\u2019s pregnant. All of this pales in comparison to what they\u2019re about to face once the plane is in the air. There\u2019s a mad bomber on board. A mentally unstable man, D.O. Guerrero (Heflin, Shane), in dire financial straits plans to set off an explosive device so his wife Inez (Stapleton, Reds) can collect on a large insurance policy he takes out before the flight. Once informed of the situation, Vernon has to find a way to separate the bomber from his briefcase.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Aside from airline disasters, the one constant of the Airport series is George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke) as Joe Petroni, a guy who knows more about planes, how they work and what they\u2019re capable of than all the pilots and experts put together. He\u2019s a chief mechanic in this first movie. He\u2019s the guy Mel calls in to deal with the snowbound plane on their longest runway, the very one that will ultimately be needed to safely land the plane in the climax. He has to come up with a way to move it before snowplows move it for him which will severely damage the craft.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As entertaining as Airport<\/strong> is, it takes some time for it to take off. I mean that literally. The first hour or so consists of introducing the characters, establishing relationships and setting up the different storylines before the doomed flight finally leaves the airport. Seaton could have tightened it up a bit. He could have lost the subplot involving area residents protesting the noise from a runway that sends planes flying directly over their houses. It doesn\u2019t really go anywhere. Once the action shifts to the plane, it begins to get good. Although the movie concerns itself with only two passengers (Hayes and Heflin), we also get a troublesome passenger, a priest travelling with two nuns, a couple of black soldiers, three doctors, the niece of a customs officer and a brainy kid too smart for his own good. I personally enjoy this aspect of disaster movies. In any event, the tension builds as Vernon and the crew devise a plan to de-bomb the increasingly nervous bomber. It leads to a scene famously lampooned in Airplane II: The Sequel where Vernon tries to talk the bomber down while passengers gather closely behind him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hayes won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Airport<\/strong>. It was well deserved. She\u2019s a hoot as a lively old lady who easily ditches the airport employee assigned to watch her until her flight home to San Diego departs. This is how she ends up on the flight to Rome. Heflin, in his final movie role, is also great as the bomber, a regular guy beaten down by life. He\u2019s unemployed, previously hospitalized for mental problems and about to lose his family. He\u2019s got nothing to lose. It never seems to occur to him that by taking his life this way, he\u2019ll be killing nearly 100 innocent people as well. He\u2019s scary without overplaying it. Lancaster plays it ultra-straight as the airport manager. Martin shifts into heroic mode as the pilot. Seberg offers nice support by almost always being at Lancaster\u2019s side. Kennedy looks like he\u2019s having a blast.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I like the use of split-screen in Airport<\/strong>. It\u2019s so very 70s! We get to see characters communicating by phone. We get to see air traffic controllers and airport officials communicate with the flight crew. It adds something to the movie. This first Airport movie takes itself a little too seriously at times, but it\u2019s still enjoyable. I don\u2019t know that I\u2019d call it great, but it is good.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Airport (1970)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Drama-Thriller\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 137 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated G (some mild language and violence, mature themes)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: George Seaton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: George Seaton\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Alfred Newman\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 29, 1970 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy, Helen Hayes, Van Heflin, Maureen Stapleton, Barry Nelson, Dana Wynter, Lloyd […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-adventure","category-these-are-some-classic-flicks"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Airport-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2071"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2831,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2071\/revisions\/2831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}