The Dawn Patrol (1930)

The Dawn Patrol (aka "Flight Commander")(Howard Hawks, 1930) Howard Hawks was a director-producer adept at many genres of film—adventure, detective (including noir), gangster, comedy, musical, even sci-fi—but what is surprising is that Hawks rarely made a war film, despite having a style-template that would prove a natural of that genre—a Hawks film usually features a disparate collection of individuals from different backgrounds and different attitudes coming together with a common goal. That summation forms the basis of most war films that one could name, but from other film-makers taking the Hawks play-book as its core. Hawks wasn't interested in war, he was interested in the challenges of creation, of the challenge itself and achieving a goal, not destruction. For Hawks, as evidenced by omission, war seemed to be a waste...and a waste of time. Even during World War II, when Hollywood was cranking out war films, Hawks made only one of his three—Air Force, which told the story of a "lost" flight that takes off with the United States at peace and lands with the United States under attack.* And when he did make war films, they were different—Sergeant York celebrated an American hero who did not want to go to war, Air Force about the challenges when the world has changed and there's no infrastructure. And The Dawn Patrol—1930 edition—is about the brotherhood of pilots at the dawn of flight who are learning the nuances of fighting in the air...but are being decimated by a combination of bureaucratic impatience and incompetence and...not giving a damn. 

A war film that celebrates the bravery of the fighters while also decrying the waste that sends them to an early grave? That's an anti-war film.

Remember The Dawn Patrol? Eight years earlier, Howard Hawks made the first version during the "Pre-Code" era, based on a story by John Monk Saunders and his own experiences as an aviation instructor during the first World War—Hawks piloted and appeared as one of the German fighters in this film—so impressive were the aerial scenes of the Hawks version that many of the flying sequences were directly incorporated into the remake. But, there are differences, although the story is basically the same.

Mostly, it's a difference in how it is played. The Erroll Flynn-David Niven-Basil Rathbone version is a bit more larky, and the relationships between Richard Barthlemess, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Neil Hamilton (playing the same characters) are quite a bit different, particularly in the character of Major Brand. Rathbone plays him with a stiff upper lip and a martinet's cool. But, Hamilton's Brand is a man snapping under pressure, and although the actor's playing of it is (to put it charitably) over the top, it speaks more to the point of the film's central theme—although the pilots are the targets, it is Brand who is in the barrel, fighting a battle he cannot win and only seeing casualties, confronted with it every day, ("It's a slaughterhouse out there and I'm the executioner!") paying the price for overseeing a revolving door of death which he must oversee.

The film begins with a foreword: "The late Fall of 1915 in France, when a great country was forced to entrust its salvation to youth -- painfully young, inexperienced, bewildered--but gloriously reckless with patriotism -- proud and eager to rush hopelessly into combat against the veteran warriors of the enemy."

That's the last we'll hear in the movie of patriotism. The rest will be personal honor and respect among the fliers extended even to the enemy who salute the pilots they shoot down. And, as in Only Angels Have Wings, little to no time is wasted on sentimentality—mourning is bad taste and bad for morale—instead, the dead are celebrated in impromptu wakes at the aerodrome's bar, which does a steady business long into the night.

The conflict is done less in the air and against the enemy as it is against "the system." In a dark page out of "Catch-22," the aerial missions are usually dangerous—the pilots are targets for anti-aircraft guns and the German fliers on the other side determined to shoot them down. There are inevitable casualties among the fliers, and replacements are called upon to replace them.

Those recruits become increasingly younger and less experienced. And the main conflict that Richard Barthlemess' Courtney has with Brand is that the new kids are sent into the air with absolutely no training for the missions, making them easy targets and to the veteran pilot's mind unnecessary ones. But Brand is under orders to send them up as soon as possible and his vehement protests are ignored by the commanders giving the orders over the telephone, not even making an appearance so close to the front lines.

It is the unseen commanders that Hawks obviously has the most contempt for, and sees as the real enemy of the war, above even the Germans on the other side. Years later, in The Big Sleep, Hawks would have Bogart's version of Philip Marlowe bitterly curl his broken lip when describing a high society gangster as "a killer by remote control"—unwilling to take responsibility or get his hands or reputation dirty by doing the act himself. Hawks doesn't even give the officers and generals any screen-time, allowing their voices to be heard over the phone—they're not even there—just emotionless button-pushers with no regard for the fliers they send to their death, and have no repercussions for their actions.

Brand cracks under the pressure and strain, but that doesn't stop him being promoted, and taunting Courtney that, as senior pilot, he has been chosen to replace him, so that he can be placed in the same impossible bind of his adversary. That "promotion" will also separate him from the other fliers, as he is now seen as responsible for the deaths that the pilots regularly drink to forget. 

One could say that Courtney, too, "cracks" under the strain of the job, but in an entirely different, "professional" manner that Hawks would approve of, solving a problem that his duties demand of him, but not the essential one of a conflict that wastes lives and talent that would seem intolerable to a director who chose to celebrate life, even in the darkest of times.

* Hawks did make Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper before the attack on Pearl Harbor—sailors at Pearl were watching it on December 6th—but Hawks was hired as director in a project he didn't initiate and at the behest of Gary Cooper.