High Flight

High Flight (1957)

The wide sky its stage...the whole range of human emotions its back-drop...in the super-charged drama of the men who fly today's top-secret jets !

The Commanding Officer of an RAF Training School must deal with a difficult cadet, but the cadet reminds the C.O. of himself when young.

Date of release
1957-09-17
TMDB
6.2 / 10 (5)
Runtime
1h 29m
Genres
War, Drama
Director
John Gilling

Casting

Interesting facts

High Flight is a 1957 British CinemaScope Cold War film, directed by John Gilling and starring Ray Milland, Bernard Lee and Leslie Phillips.

Production

Irving Allen and Albert Broccoli commissioned Jack Davies to write a screenplay about the present day Royal Air Force. Davies visited various RAF stations in Britain and Germany as well as the RAF College at Cranwell. "To say that I was impressed with what I saw and learnt was an understatement", said Davies. "These young men who fly daily at supersonic speeds are the flower of our youth.

Photography was originally scheduled around No. 111 Squadron RAF, nicknamed "Treble One" or "Tremblers", stationed at RAF Wattisham. The squadron was in the process of, or had been recently selected as the Royal Air Force Fighter Command Aerobatics Display Team, which became known as the Black Arrows. Film of the team at the 1956 Farnborough Airshow was featured.

The use of RAF Percival Provost piston and de Havilland Vampire T.11 jet training aircraft and operational Hawker Hunter fighter aircraft heightened the authenticity of the film. During the course of production at RAF Leuchars, a Hunter "wheeled up" which allowed the film crew to use the wreck to simulate a Hunter crash.

The casting of Ray Milland was typical of the Warwick Films productions, in using the star power of a Hollywood actor but in the case of Milland, he was also well suited to the film and its subject matter. During the 1930s and into the 1940s, the Welsh-born actor had moved to Hollywood and during the Second World War, had served as a civilian instructor for the United States Army Air Forces.

The movie was Anne Aubrey's first appearanace for Warwick Films. The company put her under long-term contract.

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

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