Review: Airport

As the title suggests, a film depicting the goings on at an airport, with airport manager Burt Lancaster having to contend with snowstorms, a neglected wife at home (Dana Wynter), and eventually a mad bomber (Van Heflin) on a plane. Dean Martin plays the pilot of said plane, whose girlfriend (Jacqueline Bisset) is an air hostess on board and recently pregnant. Helen Hayes plays an elderly stowaway, Jean Seberg is Lancaster’s assistant and mistress, Maureen Stapleton is Heflin’s wife, and George Kennedy plays plane engineer Joe Patroni.

If you see only one “Airport” movie in your life, make it “Airport ‘77”. It’s cheesy, overlong, but a lot of fun and the cast is terrific. Today though, I’m gonna talk about the first “Airport” from 1970. It’s not as much fun, I’m afraid. Some of the cast in this flick from director George Seaton (“Miracle on 34^th Street”) are good, and the music score by Alfred Newman (“The Grapes of Wrath”, “The Greatest Story Ever Told”) is excellent and exciting. However, while I initially enjoyed the film’s early focus on the goings on at the airport, it’s not long before you realise it’s going to be a very big problem. The film is agonisingly slow and terribly overlong for what is essentially soap opera/disaster stuff. Dress it up all you want with your Burt Lancasters and Dean Martins, but this really should’ve been leaner and meaner. It’s almost 20 minutes longer than “Airport ‘77”, which might’ve been about 10 minutes too long itself. At least that film got up in the air a lot quicker, and the plot kicked in from the opening scenes. Here we’ve got a lot of pissfarting around with Burt Lancaster’s family troubles, and the humdrum goings on at the airport before anyone even boards a damn plane. Some of it is interesting, a fair whack of it isn’t.

I like Dana Wynter and she looks very elegant in this, but playing Lancaster’s constantly disappointed and possibly soon-to-be ex-wife doesn’t afford her much of interest here. Even for soap operas, it’s a woefully underdeveloped and clichéd character. Glassy-eyed Dean Martin is hilarious casting as a pilot, but he and the rather fetching Jacqui Bisset make for a fine couple about to face some issues both domestic and in the air. He handles the serious in-air drama well and the romantic sudsy stuff in perfect Deano fashion. Burt Lancaster is rock-solid stoicism as the manager of the airport, and George Kennedy immediately grabs hold of the film as Mr. Fix-it Joe Patroni, a staple throughout the series. Sadly, because the film already has Lancaster and Martin, Patroni spends even more time on the sidelines than usual here. With all due respect to Deano, perhaps Lancaster should’ve played the pilot, as Chuck Heston and Jack Lemmon did as the stars of their respective entries in the series. It certainly would seem more in the wheelhouse of the manly Lancaster than pushing pencils and barking orders, and might’ve allowed Kennedy more screen time to get shit done on the ground as only Patroni can. I’m not sure she deserved an Oscar, but Helen Hayes is genuinely funny and adorable as a slightly manipulative elderly stowaway. It’s a shame the film sees her character as less and less important the longer the film goes on. Less impressive is the rather bland Jean Seberg as Lancaster’s associate/mistress.

The problem is that after 30 minutes no one has yet boarded the plane and we’ve only just met our resident nervy domestic terrorist, played by Van Heflin. I know the film is called “Airport”, not “Airplane!”, but a lot of the first half-hour’s worth of material really could’ve easily been lost. I would’ve excised the role played by Wynter altogether, cast Wynter in Seberg’s part and just focus on Lancaster and Wynter romancing one another whilst showing a little bit of the airport goings on, but getting on the plane a lot quicker. As is, we don’t get up in the air until after an hour! Even the worst in the series (“The Concorde- Airport ‘79” for the two of you who don’t innately know) got up and running quicker. Pacing and length really are a killer here, though some of the airport ‘drama’ is a bit on the dry side, too. silly as this might sound, I actually think the climax of both “Airplane!” (or “Flying High!”, dependent upon your location) movies happen to be more dramatically effective than the last 30 minutes of this film. They were of course spoofs of films like this, but they were mercifully shorter and more urgently paced. The way this film has been set out ends up affecting poor Van Heflin, too. He tries his best, but at times tries too hard, because the filmmakers have left him hung out to dry to the point where he can’t help but overdo the sweaty nervousness shtick. He has a few fine moments of almost non-histrionics, but is mostly forced to go for broke with the nuttiness. It’s what you might call a thankless role. I’m also not convinced that either he nor Oscar-nominated Maureen Stapleton were well-cast as anyone named Guerrero. Stapleton is OK, but like Heflin has been left to act out the histrionics a bit, and I’m not sure what the Oscar nom was all about there, either. Lloyd Nolan’s pretty good, if underused as an airport security guard with a niece on board the plane. Aside from the length and pacing issues, I’ve really, really got to take the director to task for the super-annoying, faddish, and generally unhelpful use of split-screen. It’s too distracting for negative effect.

If you trim a lot of the fat, blend the Lancaster and Martin characters, and beef up the Joe Patroni part, then this film might’ve been better. As is, it has its moments but is far too long and slow, and not all that much of it is entirely captivating anyway. Just watch “Airport ‘77”, it’s the only one in the series worth seeing. Scripted by the director from the novel by Arthur Hailey, this one’s barely OK at best. Irritating use of split-screen, too.

Rating: C+