Watch Island in the Sky For Free

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Generally excellent adaptation of Ernest Gann's 1944 novel of the same title. A C47 transport plane attached to the Army Air Transport Command, is making a winter return trip, via Iceland and Labrador, to the US. But, over Labrador, heavy icing of the wings necessitates an improvised landing on a small lake in an uncharted region of northern Quebec. Unfortunately for rescuers, there are many many small lakes in this region to chose from. The downed crew manage to get a few very brief messages out before their generator completely fails. These are picked up by the army base on Presque Island, Maine, which repeatedly sends out a rescue squadron of 4 or 5 planes, with only a vague idea of where to look, and knowing that a downed plane will be extremely difficult to spot, without periodic radio contact with the crew. Thus, much of the film deals with desperate attempts to achieve even minimal radio contact, often with merely an emergency 'coffee grinder' transmitter, which cannot receive messages, can only send Morse code, and which requires continuous strenuous hand cranking to generate enough electricity for a transmission. It may have been difficult and uncertain, but that transmitter proved the difference between success and failure.At one point, there was much debate on whether the rescue planes should try to cover the same ground as the day before or explore a new area. The latter choice was finally agreed upon. But, it was wrong, as the next transmission from the downed crew would indicate. For, they had spotted several rescue planes the day previously, not far from them. Although magnetic compass readings were unreliable in this area, and there was a lack of definitive ground markers to help tract their flight course, with the help of several subsequent brief transmissions, the rescue team finally spotted them, but missing one man, who had wandered out in a blizzard and become lost and frozen. The film ends with the rescue planes dropping food and other supplies, before flying off. Unclear to me why they couldn't land and take the men home?? One thing I noticed that bothered me was the inability to see the moisture from their breath at these supposedly -40 to -70 degrees. Also, they didn't look all that uncomfortable without arctic clothes and with minimal blankets. Otherwise, it looked like the landscape and snow was real?This story, based on a real incident, reminds me of a somewhat similar incident occurring in the glacier-filled high Andes, as related in the book "Miracle in the Andes". The pilot got disoriented in a spat of bad weather, went off course, and grazed a mountain top, tearing various parts of the plane away from the main fuselage, which landed relatively intact on a glacier, and which served as their home for the next 2 months or so. Because they had landed off course, and their radio could not transmit, only receive, rescue efforts proved futile. Thus, they were only saved by the coming of warmer weather, allowing the strongest to climb over a mountain and trek down a valley until a person was contacted. The others mostly survived until a rescue mission could be launched. See this film in B&W at You Tube

. . . the ISLAND IN THE SKY disc (specifically, that part of Batjac Company's THE MAKING OF ISLAND IN THE SKY dubbed FLIGHT SCHOOL: THE ART OF AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHY) because Mr. Nowell shot some film in the sky for MINORITY REPORT. How does that tie in with this John Wayne feature? The answer lies in the fact that this is NOT a "fair and balanced" biography of ISLAND aerial cameraman William Clothier's life. Instead, the focus of this documentary short's brief six minutes is the intersection between the work of Clothier and John Wayne, which spanned about 15 movies. So where does Mr. Nowell come into all this? MINORITY REPORT concerns an alternative, future Constitution-less America, in which Thought Police make Pre-Emptive strikes against anyone thinking of Voting Democratically. In Real Life, John Wayne was a MINORITY REPORT beta tester, doing the clairvoyant chicks' job from the later Tom Cruise movie. He fingered thousands of people--including one of Paul Revere's descendants, Anne--for prison terms, bankruptcy, deportation, and\or death by CIA Black Ops Squads (John Garfield and Errol Flynn numbered in the latter category). Perhaps Mr. Wayne paid Mr. Clothier for off-set "aerial surveillance" in the Pre-drone environment of the 1950s. After all, a guy's got to make a living, doesn't he?

Watching John Wayne tear up as he faces the prospect of his own mortality is enough to bring a lump to anyone's throat. "Island In The Sky" is affecting that way, and others, too. If only it moved a little faster...Wayne is Dooley, pilot of a five-man cargo plane contracted by the U. S. Army to service military bases in the Arctic. During the return home, the plane ices up and has to crash land somewhere in the uncharted reaches of Labrador. As Dooley and his crew fend for survival, a team of fellow flyers dedicate themselves to the awesome, awful task of trying to find them."Of course there's nothing to be scared about," Dooley tells one of his crew. "Only a few thousand miles of snow and ice and sleet."Both tough-nosed and sentimental, "Island In The Sky" ostensibly portrays the fate of the stranded aircrew but is as much concerned with presenting the bonds of brotherhood they share with their fellow airmen. That, the narration tells us, is the titular island in the sky, "their special guarded world.""Professional pilots are, of necessity, uncomplicated, simple men," director William Wellman tells us in a narration that runs on and off through the length of the film. "Their thinking must remain straightforward, or they die...violently."The narration is one of "Island In The Sky's" key weaknesses, portentous in spelling out what should be either obvious on screen or felt inside by way of subtext. Another is the adventure itself; the sections with Dooley and his men feature a lot of hand-rubbing, staring at the horizon, and cranking their tiny "coffee grinder" radio in hope of sending a signal someone will hear. Wayne is only so-so here, not helped by the fact he must brood silently for long stretches while we hear his thoughts in voice-over. "Have you ever hit your own kid?" he asks us.The best thing to be said about "Island In The Sky" is the ensemble work of the men in the air looking for Dooley. Quite a lot has been said in these IMDb user reviews, rightly, about Andy Devine as one of the senior pilots, ever-cool and detached as he measures each situation before him analytically, but the rest of the supporting cast is solid, especially Lloyd Nolan and James Arness playing two other pilots, one a soulful wise guy, the other a cocky, impulsive kid.There are about seven different crews apart from Dooley's featured in the movie. Each crew has its own unique character, which we see both in the cockpits and on the ground. Whether it's the way they talk or interact with their instruments, their scenes have authenticity, probably because of aviator Ernest K. Gann taking such an active hand in adapting his book for the screen. I really got to enjoy their company.The film is also helped greatly by the aerial cinematography of William Clothier. At times, you almost gasp at how close the lumbering cargo planes get to the trees, the hills, and each other as their metal airframes glint against the sunlight.A memorable scene featuring a wandering member of Dooley's crew packs an unforgettable punch. But Wellman inserts more narration here in the form of the crewman's voiced-over thoughts. It's almost as if Wellman didn't trust the story enough on its own.However pushed "Island In The Sky" gets, it does communicate Gann's message, that man can find strength and hope in the bonds shared with others as well as their own fortitude. Doing so while telling an unusual story set in a remote part of the world gives the film a quality that makes it worth recommending.

This story was one of my favorites. The movie was mediocre at best. But, of course it had some of my favorite actors; John Wayne, Andy Devine...I was very surprised to learn that it was closely based on a real story of even more drama and which turned out to be even more of a miracle.The movie depicts the crashed airplane as a C-47, twin engine cargo aircraft. The true story, it was a C-87, cargo version of the famed twin-tailed B-24 "Liberator" bomber. The C-87 was notoriously difficult to fly and it was said by the pilots who flew them it would not carry enough ice to make a high ball...meaning, it would quit flying when just a little bit of ice would form on the wings, which is what brought the aircraft in the story down after getting lost over the Canadian wilderness.One of the things that make the real story more fantastic than the movie was, no one died in the real story, in spite of the fact the survivors had to spend almost two months on the ice before getting evacuated. Also, there was an attempt by another rescue aircraft pilot to land on the frozen lake to bring the crash victims out and that rescue aircraft mired in the deep snow on the ice. Eventually, it turns out everyone was saved, and all the aircraft were repaired before the spring thaw and flown out, including the original four engine C-87 that crash landed on the frozen lake.Some critics have been saying the story is fake because the area of the crash is covered by numerous bush pilots. That was not so in the days of WWII. The area of the crash was so remote there were not even any maps of the area and most of the mountains were not even named…many of them today are named after the pilots who were part of the search team to find Dooley's aircraft, since they were probably the first persons to see them and locate them on navigation maps.Read Gann's book, Fate is The Hunter for the best details of this story. It is really an excellent read. Gann was an amazing writer with some unusual and delightful ways of gripping the mind of the reader.