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Too much of everything

Excellent but underrated film

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

This is a fairly interesting British film produced during WW-II on the subject of RAF crew training. Although produced by the RAF, there are some people involved in this production who would become better known in later years, including the directer, John Boulting, writer Terrance Rattigan and actors Richard Attenborough, Jack Watling and David Tomlinson. Also present is well-known British actor John Justin ("The Thief of Bagdad"), who was then serving in the RAF. Also appearing is the well-known American film actor Edward G. Robinson, who supposedly participated in this film without pay in order to help the British war effort.The film itself is surprisingly well done for a military production made under wartime conditions, and it probably presents a fairly accurate depiction of WW-II RAF flight training and bomber operations. For instance, it is true that thousands of British aircrew were trained in Canada and the U.S. during WW-II. It is nearly forgotten today that there were no less than seven airfields operated in the U.S. as British Flight Training Schools which were completely separate from USAAF and US Navy training facilities. Although the schools were operated on behalf of the RAF, they employed American civilian pilots as flight instructors rather than British or American military personnel. That probably explains the somewhat unusual uniform worn by Edward G. Robinson in the film, in which he depicts one of those American civilian flight instructors.This film still holds the viewer's interest, both as a story and as a historical document of the period during which it was produced.

As a Rattigan completist I have long coveted this film and now at last I own it on DVD. Whilst it would be ludicrous to compare it to The Way To The Stars, released the same year,for which Rattigan cannibalized his stage hit Flare Path, it's still a decent effort and worthy of being included in a time capsule of the period, The Way We Live Now and all that. Eddie Robinson gets co-star billing but has two reels screen time at most during which he manages effortlessly to outclass Dickie Attenborough who was still trying too hard to get noticed. Jack Watling takes what amounts to the second lead with David Tomlinson making up the numbers and a young George Cole in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him scene. Rattigan has cobbled a very workmanlike screenplay from this men only cast - albeit Attenborough contrives to slip a photograph of Sheila Sim under the wire. Now very much a period piece but a must for Rattigan buffs.

Journey Together is a film made with a lot of the acting talent that was still in the Royal Air Force in 1945. In that respect it was like the David Niven film The Way Ahead which was done while Niven and the rest of the male members of that cast were still in the service. In this case Richard Attenborough who had made a big impression in a small role in In Which We Serve got to star in this film about a young enlistee in the RAF who wants to be a pilot.From the days of Eddie Rickenbacker to the days of Tom Cruise in Top Gun the glamor spot in the Air service of any country is being a pilot. You get the commission, the rank, and the best of the female groupies around. Attenborough's no different, but he does not make it as a pilot.However while training in Arizona he gets to work with instructor Edward G. Robinson who washes him out as a pilot, but says he can make it as a navigator. As Robinson puts it the pilot is just glamorized driver, he was the whole show in those single engine biplanes from World War I, but in this war he's just the head of crew and they all have jobs to do. Particularly the navigator and Robinson and I agree it takes brains to be a navigator, to read those charts and instruments and plot a right course. He fails, everybody fails.Attenborough gets a chance in combat to show how important navigators are and what he does is what you see Journey Together for.The presence of Edward G. Robinson albeit in a small role insured a few more dollars for the American market. But the film is Attenborough's and he does a fine job in the lead. Journey Together is a nicely plotted war film and aviation buffs will love seeing those vintage British airplanes.

"That same day [30th August 1944], the RAF Film Unit arrived at Methwold with all of the necessary equipment to shoot the Squadron Lancasters for sequences in a movie titled 'Journey Together'. Great pains were taken to exclude No. 149's Stirlings from any of the shots." From "Strong By Night" History and Memories of No. 149 (East India) Squadron Royal Air Force 1918/19 - 1937/56; John Johnston and Nick Carter; An AIR-Britain Publication.In one of the external scenes of a Lancaster Squadron Station, there is a fleeting glimpse of a Lancaster in the background sporting the Squadron code letters "OJ" of 149 Squadron. The Squadron had just completed conversion from Stirlings to Lancasters and most of the Stirlings were still at Methwold, hence the comment about excluding them from any of the shots although whether that was at the RAF's or director's insistence is not explained.