Errol Flynn joins the war effort here, (remember "Dive Bomber' was before Pearl Harbor), in a 'fun' adventure story of a bomber crew downed in Germany who hides and fights their way across occupied Europe, the survivors, (half of them), eventually get back to England by stealing a British bomber the Germans had captured and were going to use to bomb the waterworks that supplies London. While there are some serious moments, much of their journey is a lark, full of wise-cracks and easy victories over German guards and pursuers. I half expected our heroes to use the Hope-Crosby patty-cake routine to disarm the bad guys when they got the drop on them.
If you want to take the film apart, you can. But if you don't, you'll have a good time as war-time audiences surely did. The bomber crew is intentionally an unlikely group: Flynn finally gets to play an Australian. Ronald Reagan plays a typical American, (complete with a wonderful double-talk routine), Alan Hale a British veteran of the first war and Arthur Kennedy a Canadian, thus uniting in one crew the four major English-speaking nations that were fighting the Germans. The RAF and the USAF, of course, had their own bombers and crews and their own ideas about how to use them. It's doubtful that there was ever a bomber crew combining these nationalities. But it's a tribute to all of them.
The cast is quite a crew themselves. Flynn at this time was frustrated that his medical history, (he'd had malaria and was soon found to have a mild heart problem as well), kept him out of the action and forced him to 'fight' the war in films like this. He'd volunteered to be a civilian guide around his old haunts in New Guinea but was turned down for that, too. And the phony rape allegations against him came out just before this film came out, so this was a test of his continuing popularity, which he passed as this became one of the top box-office films of the year. Ronald Reagan had had his breakthrough role in 'Kings Row' just before this and was more co-star than second lead here, after playing General Custer to Flynn's Jeb Stuart in 'Santa Fe Trail' two years before. Unfortunately, he was shortly inducted into the military service, killing the momentum his career had finally found and he never became a big star, just a name until he entered politics. Arthur Kennedy had just played a bad guy who dies next to Flynn's version of Custer in 'They Died With Their Boots on'. Alan Hale Sr. Was the 10th of the 13 Flynn films he would appear in and gets to die heroically in a battle with the Germans. Raymond Massey, after playing the fanatical John Brown in 'Santa Fe Trail', plays a fanatical, monocled German officer who takes personal charge of capturing Flynn's crew.
The film certainly acknowledges the danger the heroes were in: three of their crew die. Nancy Coleman plays a nurse who helps them and whose fate is uncertain as she walks away from them at the end. But it's mostly about the guys repeatedly triumphing over the rather inept bad guys, (whose security arrangements seem particularly sparse). But 1942 audiences enjoyed seeing the Nazis look bad: see also the Humphrey Bogart vehicle, "All Through the Night" from the same year, with gangsters battling fifth columnists in New York. I don't recall a similar film involving the Japanese, whom we apparently didn't regard as funny. This film is certainly entertaining. Some of a later generation have compared it to 'Hogan's Heroes' for its combination of Nazi's, comedy and adventure. I would also compare it to 'I Spy' for the casual banter of the heroes under pressure.
You can take it apart if you want. But you might find it's more fun to accept it for what it is and just enjoy it.
If you want to take the film apart, you can. But if you don't, you'll have a good time as war-time audiences surely did. The bomber crew is intentionally an unlikely group: Flynn finally gets to play an Australian. Ronald Reagan plays a typical American, (complete with a wonderful double-talk routine), Alan Hale a British veteran of the first war and Arthur Kennedy a Canadian, thus uniting in one crew the four major English-speaking nations that were fighting the Germans. The RAF and the USAF, of course, had their own bombers and crews and their own ideas about how to use them. It's doubtful that there was ever a bomber crew combining these nationalities. But it's a tribute to all of them.
The cast is quite a crew themselves. Flynn at this time was frustrated that his medical history, (he'd had malaria and was soon found to have a mild heart problem as well), kept him out of the action and forced him to 'fight' the war in films like this. He'd volunteered to be a civilian guide around his old haunts in New Guinea but was turned down for that, too. And the phony rape allegations against him came out just before this film came out, so this was a test of his continuing popularity, which he passed as this became one of the top box-office films of the year. Ronald Reagan had had his breakthrough role in 'Kings Row' just before this and was more co-star than second lead here, after playing General Custer to Flynn's Jeb Stuart in 'Santa Fe Trail' two years before. Unfortunately, he was shortly inducted into the military service, killing the momentum his career had finally found and he never became a big star, just a name until he entered politics. Arthur Kennedy had just played a bad guy who dies next to Flynn's version of Custer in 'They Died With Their Boots on'. Alan Hale Sr. Was the 10th of the 13 Flynn films he would appear in and gets to die heroically in a battle with the Germans. Raymond Massey, after playing the fanatical John Brown in 'Santa Fe Trail', plays a fanatical, monocled German officer who takes personal charge of capturing Flynn's crew.
The film certainly acknowledges the danger the heroes were in: three of their crew die. Nancy Coleman plays a nurse who helps them and whose fate is uncertain as she walks away from them at the end. But it's mostly about the guys repeatedly triumphing over the rather inept bad guys, (whose security arrangements seem particularly sparse). But 1942 audiences enjoyed seeing the Nazis look bad: see also the Humphrey Bogart vehicle, "All Through the Night" from the same year, with gangsters battling fifth columnists in New York. I don't recall a similar film involving the Japanese, whom we apparently didn't regard as funny. This film is certainly entertaining. Some of a later generation have compared it to 'Hogan's Heroes' for its combination of Nazi's, comedy and adventure. I would also compare it to 'I Spy' for the casual banter of the heroes under pressure.
You can take it apart if you want. But you might find it's more fun to accept it for what it is and just enjoy it.