Ace of Aces (1933)

 

                   Remember when Richard Dix was a big star?  Good, because you would have to be dead.  Dix was a star in the 1930’s.  He was nominated for Best Actor in 1931 for “Cimarron”.  He had a good career, but is largely forgotten.  He stars in “Ace of Aces”, otherwise known as “Bird of Prey” which is the name of the story it was based on.  The story was written by John Monk Saunders.  Saunders was motivated to write aviation stories due to being stuck in Florida during WWI as a flight instructor.  Failing to get to the big show haunted him the rest of his life.  He also wrote the story for “The Dawn Patrol” (1930).  It was entitled “The Flight Commander” and won his a Best Story Oscar.  Another of his stories became “The Eagle and the Hawk”.  “Ace of Aces” was directed by J. Walter Ruben and he had access to a nice fleet of planes, including some French Nieuports.  Despite this, the film used some footage from “Hell’s Angels”.                 

                   The movie starts off poorly with two love-birds cooing on a bench.  Rocky (Dix) and Nancy (Elizabeth Allan) are engaged to be married and will live happily ever after.  He is a sculptor who works while wearing a suit and tie.  Then along comes the pesky Great War.  Rocky sneers at the lemmings who are willing to enlist and jump off a cliff.  He is a confirmed pacifist, but can’t convince Nancy it’s a matter of principle.  Rocky:  “It’s cute when you salute the flag.”  Nancy:  “You’re as yellow as this piece of chalk.”   She brands him a coward and goes off to become a nurse on the Western Front.  What’s a macho leading man to do?   Did someone call for redemption?  Before you can flash a white feather, Rocky is suddenly in a barracks in France.  He’s a lieutenant!   Did the movie cut half an hour or did sculptors enter as officers?  The unit has a monkey and a lion (an homage to Lufbery’s Lafayette Escadrille).  Rocky still believes thou shalt not kill, until a German wounds him.  It’s on now!  Suddenly he loves killing and is determined to become the leading ace (hence the title of the movie).  He invents attacking from the sun.  That’s how great he is.  He becomes a pompous ass and when reunited with Nancy, he insists she do her “duty” while he is on leave in Paris.

                   There is a subgenre of WWI air combat movies.  Some are quite good and took advantage of the availability of vintage aircraft.  Movies like “Hell’s Angels” and “The Dawn Patrol” set high standards, but inspired some low quality imitators.  “Ace of Aces” is in the bottom half of the subgenre.   It is a misfire from the opening scene.  Dix was too old for the role and his character is dislikeable.   Rocky is also inconsistent, whiplashing between pacifism and jingoism.  His character arc makes little sense except in a cinematically contrived way.  It does not help that Dix is a poor actor, at least for modern tastes.  Allan is equally bad and has a similarly flawed character.  Nancy starts as a patriotic role model for American women and then becomes the woman who goes to bed because a man tells her its her duty.  So much for feminism in 1933. 

                   The movie is laden with the clichés that abound in the subgenre.  The pilot Rocky evinces the devil may care of cinematic fighter pilots.  He is the pilot obsessed with kills who loses his humanity.  He’s a loner who shows no emotion when mates are lost.   He and the other pilots are heavy drinkers.  Hell, the monkey is an alcoholic!  The movie might have been saved by the combat sequences, but those are poorly rendered and only make up about five minutes of the film.  And the movie is infuriatingly disrespectful of its audience.  The movie came out only fifteen years after Eddie Richenbacker became America’s ace of aces with 26 victories.  And yet, in the movie, Rocky shoots down 42 planes!  Most adult audience members would have known the 26 figure like they knew Babe Ruth’s 60.  They were expected to believe Rocky was a much better ace than Eddie Rickenbacker?  Give me a break!

                   “Ace of Aces” is not the worst WWI aviation film.  That honor goes to “Lafayette Escadrille”.  However, it is certainly one of the worst.  It makes “Flyboys” look like a classic.

 

GRADE  =  D