To me, this movie is perfection.

A Masterpiece!

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Captains of the Clouds (1942) It's always a bit weird to see semi-propaganda films made with mainstream talent, as if it's just another movie. It kind of eats into the credibility of movies in that period in general, as distinctive art forms as opposed to commercial vehicles. So this has (for example) songs by Harold Arlen (Over the Rainbow fame) and Johnny Mercer, and some photography by the great Sol Polito (though there were four shooters involved, due to the range of situations required). And the director is the indisputably excellent Michael Curtiz, who was making "Casablanca" at roughly the same time. This is a movie about the Canadian air effort in the war. The lead by James Cagney is slightly odd in this regard, but it gives the movie creds. The leading woman (reddish hair and very red lipstick for the Technicolor production) is a more suitable Brenda Marshall. The scene is in an isolated lake country, dependent on small planes for getting everything they need in and out (including teams of huskies, at the beginning). It's all quite beautiful, and if the characters are back woods caricatures, that's part of the whole shtick with this kind of film. So this is a manly world with people dickering over money, but showing a kind of integrity that makes them dependable and ready to support the war effort once it gets going. The speech by Winston Churchill heard by radio (halfway through the film) is the key turning point, and the men rise above their petty small town rivalries. The "girl" is what really matters behind all their arguments. But war, of course, changes even love. Devotees of war films will appreciate the accuracies in the training and the aircraft used. Of course, this was shot not long after it actually was happening (a year or two) and legitimacy is almost unavoidable on some level. But finally I have to get to the actual plot, the human interactions that make up the story, because this is a weakness overall. The attempts to give personal relatability to the events are natural, but not all that convincing. So seeing it sixty years later it can't be watched quite for the story itself, but for the many parts that make up the overall arc. Curtiz is great and he makes the most of it all. Max Steiner's music helps though it is a little overblown for a lot of what a mount to documentary sections. The fact it's in color is interesting (for the expense) and it's actually part of what makes it interesting-and it's quite believable, clean, not oversaturated color, brilliantly controlled.

If you're going to watch this, do so for the technicolor flying action. The plot is terrible. Our star is James Cagney as Brian McLean. He introduces himself as a Canadian bush pilot who is lying about the other local pilots and undercutting their prices to get all of the local jobs. Also the instant he lands and sees Emily (Brenda Marshall) he decides to make up stories about Johnny her lover who she plans to marry, and take her away from him. He gets hit by his own helicopter blade. She nurses him to health. Johnny, in dangerous weather conditions, flies a doctor in and saves him. These two and another guy make a bunch of money. Then Brian marries and immediately leaves Emily. He says he needed to do that to stop Brian from marrying her and prevent him from wasting all of his money on her (really). They end up in the Canadian air force. He is all about being a hotshot with his intuitive skills. He is a trainer. He takes a pilot up to show him how it's done. He crashes, nearly kills the guy and totals the plane. For this he is court martialed and forced to leave the military. So he mopes around town getting drunk and complaining about it. He get's the bright idea of dive bombing a celebration where the air force is giving other pilots their wings with a friend and the friend gets killed. He is rather intuitive and reckless. But in the end he sneaks back into the air force. He flies with a group of unarmed planes to England. A German plane shows up. He flies his plane and himself into the German plane. They both crash. The other planes are saved. He is a hero. The end. Stupid.

. . . his characters always get second and tenth chances, no matter how many "friendly fire" deaths they cause. Moreover, America's propagandists made sure that all of Cagney's war-time sinners became saints by the final credits to offset all the collateral damage and havoc they'd wreaked in their wakes. In THE FIGHTING 69th, Cagney's role is to portray a WWI dough-boy so "yellow" that scores of his comrades and company's officers are needlessly killed in multiple outrages on the Western Front (including the "Trees" poet, Sgt. Joyce Kilmer). Whenever this wayward Yank is given an order, he behaves as if they're having an "Opposite Day" to amuse him. But on the eve of his long-overdue execution, a German artillery shell springs him from his cell, whereupon he single-handedly breaks up a Hun counter-attack, dying a brave hero in the process. This plot went over so well that it gets embedded just a few years later into this WWII yarn, CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS. This time Cagney's "Brian" is briefly a RCAF officer, but Brian's just as loathe to follow orders as Cagney's WWI dough-boy. Brian succeeds in killing off about half his friends. But with his sixth chance, he's in a position to put an end to it when the Germans begin to pick off the other half. If Cagney was a YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, think how that makes two-time losers Germany feel!

Okay, I'll admit that this film is NOT Shakespeare! In fact, at times the plot is VERY VERY formulaic and silly but somehow the overall package is still quite entertaining.Jimmy Cagney is the main lead of the film, though it actually has an ensemble cast consisting of Dennis Morgan and other Warner Brothers regulars. And unfortunately, the worst part of this film is Cagney's character, as he plays essentially the exact same character he played in so many Warner films. You know,...the brash and obnoxious guy who seems greatly in need of a comeuppance (such as in THE FIGHTING 69th and MANY other films). It's too bad, as the rest of the plot is very very good and this is a wonderful propaganda film meant to bolster support for the war. In fact, the more I think about it, Cagney's character and how it was written so derivatively is the only real problem in the film. It's a shame really, as apart from this the acting is excellent and the Technicolor scenes of the Canadian wilderness and flying are beautiful.