Airport -1970
What a piece of JUNK!
Director
George Seaton
Henry Hathaway

Writer
Arthur Hailey novel “Airport”
George Seaton

Producer
Ross Hunter
Jacques Mapes

Cast
Burt Lancaster
Dean Martin
George Kennedy
Jacqueline Bisset

Review by Wayne Malin

The first of the 1970s disaster films. A midwestern airport in Chicago is contending with a huge blizzard, a psycho with a bomb (Van Heflin), a “lovable” stowaway (Helen Hayes), a harried airport manager (Burt Lancaster), his obnoxious pilot brother (Dean Martin) and assorted mistresses and wives.

A big, glossy BORING soap opera. The book by Arthur Hailey was a good, entertaining book with complex characters and situations. All characterization went out the window with the movie, the plots were dumbed down and what’s left is cliched characters and truly laughable dialogue. A talk between Martin and his mistress (Jacqueline Bisset) is astoundingly stupid.

This is chockful of actors obviously desperate for a paycheck–Burt Lancaster (looks terrible and doesn’t even try to act); Jean Seberg (really tries but the dialogue defeats her and has a HORRIBLE 1970s wardrobe); Dean Martin (appears drunk); Jacqueline Bisset (just stunning, but given nothing to work with); Helen Hayes (looks miserable–somehow she won as Oscar for this). Only van Heflin, George Kennedy and Maureen Stapleton inject any life into their parts. Stapleton especially is heart-wrenching in a scene at the end. She was nominated for an Academy Award too but lost to Hayes (God knows why). Also the special effects are pretty bad but were probably state of the art in 1970.

On the plus side–there IS excellent use of split screens throughout the movie (letter box viewing is essential).

A big budget bomb. Critics HATED this movie–even the actors in it hated it (Lancaster called it “a big piece of junk”). However it was a huge hit and nominated for 10 Academy Awards (it won 1).

I really can’t recommend this. Not even good for laughs. Avoid.

Airport – 1970

Review by Zetes

Quite an entertaining piece of filmmaking,

Airport was an enormous hit when it was first released in 1970, the biggest blockbuster of its time. Today it’s best known for being the basis for the spoof film Airplane!. Heck, more people have probably seen Airplane II: the Sequel than have seen Airport, probably more than even know Airport exists. The film has become a joke, and that’s unfortunate. It’s no great masterpiece, it may not have deserved 10 Oscar nominations, it may not have deserved to make so much money and spawn several sequels, but it’s certainly an engaging 140 minutes.

The film mixes personal melodrama with a suspense film. There are a dozen or so characters and several big actors on the bill. Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin are the most immediately recognizable. Lancaster plays the manager of the airport, and he is quite good (although he was better in umpteen other roles in his career). Dean Martin plays a pilot. Now, he probably wouldn’t be my first pick to play an airplane pilot. Rumor has it that Dino has a bit of a drinking problem. But he is quite good in the role. Jean Seberg has a pretty thankless role as Lancaster’s second in command. It’s petty, but her hair is awful in this film. I didn’t even recognize her until she put on a parka, when she began to look more like her Breathless days. Jacqueline Bisset plays Lancaster’s whiny wife. She’s got to be one of the least understanding spouses in cinema history. Helen Hayes plays an old woman who is able to make her way around the country by stowing away in planes. She’s sure that they won’t bust her – no airline wants that kind of bad publicity. The film was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and she was its only winner, for Best Supporting Actress. The film probably deserved any of the other awards before it deserved that one – she’s annoying. Perhaps people found her funny in 1970, but I was quite hoping that she would get her butt sucked out of the plane.

Airport definitely suffers from some major dating, which is why hardly anyone ever mentions it anymore unless as a camp reference. Dino has knocked up a stewardess, and they have a cheesy (but not unaffecting) dialogue about what they should do. The film never does resolve the fact that he loves both his wife and his mistress. In his first scene in the film, Dino’s dropped off at the airport by his wife who tells Lancaster confidently: “Some day he’ll come home and find a reason to stay.” And it seems like he loves her back. But the end leaves us with little doubt as to whether he’ll stay with the stewardess (and be father to her child). A lot of the personal melodramatics seem too abundant, especially the stuff between Lancaster and Bisset. Fortunately, the suspense is much more successful.

Some people may scoff at the use of split screen and similar techniques that are used to depict two separate settings, such as the cockpit and the control station. Sometimes the head of the control tower will appear in between Dino and the other pilot in a little bubble with a thick, black outline – it almost looks like the little squares in which the members of the Brady family appear at the beginning of each episode of the Brady Bunch. However, that technique works quite well. I think, if anything, the film may have deserved an Oscar for Best Editing (I don’t even know offhand if that was one of the categories in which it was nominated – nor do I know what other films were up against it in that category, although I assume MASH was, which would be an even more deserving nominee). 8/10.