Cone of Silence

Cone of Silence (1960)

Jet crash mystery solved !!! Where does the blame belong ? Is it the plane ? Is is the pilot ? Is it a plot ?

A seasoned pilot is condemned for an error which causes a crash. The pilot later dies in a crash with similar circumstances and an examiner looks for scientific reasons for the crashes.

Date of release
1960-05-10
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (12)
Runtime
1h 28m
Genres
Drama, Thriller
Director
Charles Frend

Casting

Interesting facts

Cone of Silence is a 1960 British drama film directed by Charles Frend and starring Michael Craig, Peter Cushing, George Sanders and Bernard Lee. The film is based upon the novel of that name by David Beaty, which is loosely based on a 1952 plane crash in Rome and subsequent investigations into the structural integrity of the de Havilland Comet airliner.

Production

Cone of Silence was based on David Beaty's novel Cone of Silence (1959). Beaty was a former military and commercial pilot with BOAC who became an expert on human error in aviation accidents. After beginning a writing career with his first novels based on aviation themes, Beaty returned to college to acquire his degree in psychology and became a civil servant in 1967.

Budgetary constraints caused the use of miniatures to depict airfields and aircraft, although principal photography took place at Filton Airport in North Bristol with the cooperation of the Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd. The majority of the film was shot on the sound stages at Shepperton Studios.

Aubrey Baring provided £16,060 to the budget.

The film's Phoenix airliner is represented by the Avro Ashton WB493, in use since 1955 as a testbed by the engine manufacturer Bristol Siddeley. The real aircraft, named the Olympus-Ashton, was powered by two Olympus turbojet podded underwing engines in addition to four Nenes mounted in the standard wing root location.

Severin released the blu-ray edition of this film in the box set Cushing Curiosities in November 2023, loaded with extras and for the first time on home video in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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