Airport

Airport

“Airport” entertained me for a few hours on some dumb fundamental level, though I can’t remember why. The plot doesn’t surprise (you know and I know that no airplane ever piloted by Dean Martin ever crashed). The gags are simpleminded to painful (a priest, pretending to cross himself, whacks a wise guy across the face).

And the characters talk in regulation B-movie cliches like no B movie you’ve seen in ten years. Example: A bomb blows a hole in the airplane and weakens the tail structure. Martin’s copilot says: “Listen, Vern, I want you to know that if there’s anything I can do” What’s he talking about? Martin’s girl.

There are a lot of expensive stars in this movie but only two (Helen Hayes and Van Heflin) have wit enough to abandon all pretense of seriousness. Even Martin, who can be charming in movies when he relaxes, plays it straight as a hero type this time. Burt Lancaster is even straighter and more heroic than that because he has to run the airport and supervise George Kennedy in pulling out a stuck Boeing 707 and decide to divorce his wife all at the same time.

But Miss Hayes and Heflin realized early on that “Airport” was going to be none too thrilling, so they went about salvaging their own roles at least. Miss Hayes milks her role of little old lady stowaway for all it’s conceivably worth i.e., she does everything but come out of that airplane with her blouse unbuttoned and I suspect she wrote some of her own dialogue; it’s warmer and more humorous than the stiff lines everyone else has to recite, which is probably why she won an Oscar for what ought mainly to have been a stage appearance.

Heflin, as far as I’m concerned, is the only person in the cast to realize how metaphysically absurd “Airport” basically is. This airplane already has a priest, two nuns, three doctors, a stowaway, a customs officer’s niece, a pregnant stewardess, two black GIs, a loudmouthed kid and Dean Martin aboard with it, right? so obviously the bomber has to be typecast too.

Heflin sweats, shakes, peers around nervously, clutches his briefcase to his chest with both arms and refuses to talk to anybody and swallows a lot. The customs officer sees him going on the plane and notices “something in his eyes.” Also in his ears, nose and throat. What Heflin does is undermine the structure of the whole movie with a sort of subversive overacting. Once the bomber becomes ridiculous once we realize that he intends to blow up not only himself but also most of everybody else on this manifest then finally we can laugh at him without restraint.

At which point it is time to leave for lunch.

FILMOLOGY: From Left: Jean Seberg as Tanya Livingston; George Kennedy as Joe Patroni; Jacqueline Bisset as Gwen Meighen Scott; Helen Hayes as Ada Quonsett; Burt Lancaster as Mel Bakersfield; Maureen Stapleton as Inez Guerrero (with Monica Lewis); Van Heflin as D.O. Guerrerro; Barry Nelson as Capt Anson Harris Jr.; Lloyd Nolan as Harry Standish; Dana Wynter as Cindy Bakersfield; Barbara Hale as Sarah Bakersfield (with Lisa Gerritsen); Gary Collins as Cy Jordan (with Janis Hansen).

Watch Airport For Free On Gomovies.