Twelve O'Clock High | | Cast : | Gregory Peck, Hugh Marlowe | | Director : | Henry King | | Studio : | Twentieth Century Fox | | Format : | Black & White, Closed-captioned, Black & White | | Released Date : | January 01, 1949 | | DVD Released Date : | May 21, 2002 | | Language : | French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Dubbed), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 09, 2005 | | Summary | Cold at the heart | Content
 | 12 O'Clock High may be considered a masterpiece, but I find the character of Brig. Gen. Frank Savage (Gregory Peck) repellant to the point of loathsomeness, which for me undermines this otherwise well-made production.
Consider: Col. Keith Davenport (well-played by Gary Merrill) the commanding officer of a weary and battle-fatigued unit is removed from his command by Savage, who had been Davenport's friend. What did Davenport do wrong? In Savage's words: "He's a first rate guy who over-identifies with his men." As played by Gregory Peck, Savage is the most authoritarian martinet this side of Capt. Queeg. Unsurprisingly, every airman puts in for a transfer out of his unit. Aware that this will make him look bad to his superiors, Savage conspires with his desk jockey ground officer Maj. Harry Stovall (Dean Jagger) to delay the transfers while he works to improve the unit's performance, and in doing so build cohesion and morale. When the Inspector General arrives, Savage is cleaning off his desk, sure that he will lose his command and be sent back to the Pentagon. But instead every man has cancelled his transfer request and Savage stays. I found this situation highly improbable, considering that Savage had 1) relieved the popular Davenport of his command, 2) closed the Officer's club, 3) busted several of the airmen down a couple of ranks and 4) told them in a "pep" talk that they should think of themselves as dead men. I think it would be far more likely that they would have transferred out of the unit to get far, far away from that neurotic mess of a general and that Savage would have been transferred to Washington. But no, the 918th goes on to become a crack unit. Cohesion is restored and all is well, or is it? Late in the film Savage breaks down and is unable to complete a flight mission. This is a moment of high drama, the tough-as-nails general rendered helpless, but by this time I had no sympathy for this very unsympathetic character.
Perhaps it was because there is no attempt to show that Savage has any feelings. There is no romantic interest and women do not appear in the film at all, except as nurses and canteen workers. When the formerly sad sack unit completes a bombing mission, Savage brushes off a suggestion that he should give the men a weekend pass to London as a reward. "What?" he says. "And buy their loyalty?" Efforts by Maj. "Doc" Kaiser (Paul Stewart) and Col. Davenport to get Savage to lighten up are similarly ignored.
Dean Jagger does a good turn as Maj. Harry Stovall. The framing sequence at the beginning and end of the film that takes place after the war is effectively handled. Well scored, with actual battle sequences filmed during WW II, this is a classic war film that ranks among the greats, but one that I found somewhat cold at the heart.
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| Rating | | | Date | August 03, 2005 | | Summary | WWII Buff | Content
| This is one of my favorite movies. The copy I received is in perfect condition and arrived as advertised. Only one comment...it was on sale at Walmart for half of what I paid.
Still think Amazon is great maybe I will wait a while longer to order. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 17, 2005 | | Summary | Excellent WWII Film: Tough Minded and Not Too Preachy | Content
| This has got to be one of the best movies based on the WWII experience. The story line is simple. A U. S. bomber group based in England is taking too many losses flying daylight runs against the Germans. It's failing to achieve the results it should and morale is drifting down. It could infect other bombing groups. The commanding officer is replaced by a tough-minded, no nonsense brigadier general who is utterly dedicated to winning the war. He uses harsh tactics, discipline and grinding practice to transform what was close to being a group of losers into an effective, cohesive force. The cost to the war effort was worth it; the cost to him was too high. Gregory Peck plays Brigadier General Frank Savage in one of his best performances. The movie itself is almost unrelentingly grim until we realize that the group is coming through, even as we see Savage begin to break apart.
The point of the film is summed up in two speeches. The first is by Major General Ben Pritchard (Millard Mitchell) to Savage as he tells him why he's going to replace Colonel Keith Davenport (Gary Merrill), a man they both respect, with Savage. "We're fighting all over the world. Every theater commander is screaming for crews and equipment...Our problem right now narrows down to one group. If the 918th folds it can spread to the other three groups. It can fold the whole deal...I guess I don't have to tell you what's coming, Frank. I'm going to have to ask you to take nice young boys and fly them until they can't stand it, then to take them out, put them back in and fly them again. We've got to try to find out just what a maximum effort is..."
Savage takes command and moves to impose his will and standards on the group. One of his first actions is to call the air crews together to tell them to suck it up. "I don't have a lot of patience," he says. "with this 'what are we fighting for' stuff. We're in a war, a shooting was. We've got to fight. And some of us have got to die. Now I'm not telling you not to be afraid. Fear is normal. Stop worrying about it...and yourselves. Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea it won't be so tough."
We're 30 minutes into the movie before Savage takes over. All that time has been spent establishing the situation, getting to know the crews and what they go through every time they fly and survive a mission. And, through Pritchard, what the bigger issues are. Once Savage takes over, however, the movie focuses on Savage and the men, the way he deals with them, the standards he insists on, the techniques he uses to shame or force them to accept what they must do.
The movie climax begins with their first bombing run over Germany. The sequence takes about 20 minutes and is built up of actual aerial combat footage and realistic staged scenes. There's no music. All we have is the muffled drone of the engines, flak blossoming and German fighters diving through the bomber formations. One by one bombers are hit and go down. Some of the crews can be seen bailing out, sometimes they don't make it. The formation keeps going toward the target. It's a harrowing sequence.
This is a tough minded movie. It has none of the Hollywood patriotic bombast exemplified by all those WWII John Wayne movies (as good as some of them are) or the Hollywood post traumatic stress syndrome exemplified by many of the Viet Nam films. It simply shows without too much preaching what happened to a WWII bomber group that started to fall apart and then was brought back up, and shows what happened to the men.
This is a first-rate film. The DVD transfer (the movie was filmed in black and white) looks very good. There are no extras. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 12, 2005 | | Summary | One of the best war films ever made | Content
| Luck. There's no such thing as luck - luck is made by men, not fate. This is the philosophy "Twelve O'Clock High" opens with. The 918th, a unit within the 8th Air Force, has a commander loved by his men, and even the audience will find no reason to hate him. Yet despite his fine qualities, problems are consistent - casualties within the unit are always high, they're always late to their target, and they never seem to do any damage. Does the unit have bad luck? Gregory Peck's character doesn't seem to think so, and sees it in the goody-two-shoes commander of the 918th. In response, a superior officer relieves the commander and puts Gregory Peck in his place. Now begins the real trial - take a unit laughed at by the rest of the wing during a critical moment in World War II (the daylight bombings of 1942/43) and turn it into a tip-top outfit.
As stated by some other reviewers, this movie is a classic for its treatise on leadership. Gregory Peck continually denies falling into the trap of his predecessor, and will not become TOO nice with his men. He continues to press them hard, scold them for neglect, and shift around commanders who seem to be incompetant. Some of his speeches and sayings ("Imagine you're already dead.") will stick in your mind even after the ending credits. Yet as the unit matures, so does Gregory. After the loss of some of the only men in the unit he truly admired, he realizes that the men in those bombers are not "numbers" but flesh and blood boys with real personalities. Soon he begins to crack under his own strain, and he too realizes what "maximum effort" is.
The filmmaking itself is commendable. There is very little action except for near the end - most of the emphasis is on the story and observing the unit grow. Yet the storyline never drags and offers great moments in the character transition. Gregory Peck, before entering the base as commander for the first time, calls his driver by name and shares a smoke with him - then suddenly calls him "sergeant" as they drive off into the base. Gregory Peck's character also has a strong character transition when one of his most prized lieutenant dies, and he becomes much more attached to his men than he intended to ever be. The RAF boots are in particular a strong motiph - I won't ruin too much, but keep an eye on how they're used in the film.
"Twelve O'Clock High" is more than a war film. It's a film about men, about leadership, and about the "maximum effort" both must go through to get the job done. It's about a war no one wanted to fight but did so because they knew it had to be finished. It's about character, maturity, and most of all...pride. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 27, 2005 | | Summary | Part of a Training Course | Content
| This film along with Kenneth Blanchard's, Leadership and the One Minute Manager : Increasing Effectiveness Through Situational Leadership, comprised a course that was often used in the 80's and earlier. The situational leadership templates taught in the book were then tracked against this film. The exercise was to observe the leadership styles and subordinates maturity and the effectiveness of their interaction. This was a course given to the Royal Airforce Officers in the UK for decades - an RAF commandant friend saw it hundreds of times in this context.
Get a copy of the film and book and treat yourself to a home study course that would have cost you $100's at a public event.
What's learnt from the film and book is very powerful stuff when applied to the workplace in any context. |
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