JET OVER THE ATLANTIC

US, 1960, 95 minutes, Black and white.
Guy Madison, Virginia Mayo, George Raft, Ilona Massey, George Macready, Anna Lee, Margaret Lindsay.
Directed by Byron Haskin.

Jet over the Atlantic was ahead of its time. It is a plane disaster film which also has some of the old stars in guest parts, for example Ilona Massey and Margaret Lindsay and George Raft. However this is a B grade adventure, nonetheless enjoyable. It takes a seemingly impossible situation and a strange collection of characters on the plane and treats them to disaster. It is interesting to compare this kind of film of the fifties, for example also The Last Voyage, Julie, with the disaster films of the seventies.

1. Title? Expectation? The disaster genre as presented in the late 50s? The difference between the 50's and later styles?

2. How much did the film rely on the genre and its conventions? The flight and the machine? Audience interest in planes and their workings? The cross section of crew, passengers? Passengers with problems? Conventional characters and characterisations? Better than average? Cliche? Melodramatic aspects?

3. Black and white photography? Musical score? Special effects? The gas, the flight etc.?

4. How plausible was the plot? The passengers? Matoon and Stafford being on board? Matoon's flying background and its use in the crisis? Jean and her getting aboard? Sir Robert and his madness? The credibility of the behaviour on the plane, especially the marriage? The gas and the deaths? The landing of the plans?

5. The clearing of Matoon? The flashback sequences within it? How well drawn were the principal characters? Credible? Matoon and the false accusations, condemned to death, escape, presence in Spain, love for Jean - and the tender sequences changing to his arrest? The marriage? Heroism on the plane? Jean as a singer overseas, wanting marriage, getting on the plane, the wedding, facing death? Sir Robert as mad in his background? the daughter's death? The presence of his wife? His planting of the gas - his murder of the supplier? Comment on Stafford as a policeman, taking control? The doctor and the young girl in romance? The spinster and her gossiping overhearing things, arranging the marriage, giving the final interview? Mother and daughter? The opera star and her prima donna manner, her secretary?

6. The plausibility of the flight, audience interest in the flight and the interaction of the passengers?

7. How dramatic and melodramatic was the crisis? The deaths?

8. Theme of human nature, serious, satiric, heroic, melodramatic?