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| Director: George Seaton |
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George Seaton, Arthur Hailey |
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| Producer: |
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Ross Hunter, Jacques Mapes |
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| Cast: |
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Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Jean Seberg, Jacqueline Bisset, George Kennedy |
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| Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 |
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(NTSC Anamorphic Widescreen) |
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Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS |
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| Subtitles: |
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English, Spanish, French |
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| Studio: Universal Pictures |
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DVD Region: 1 |
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G |
| DVD Release: Apr 2003 |
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Discs: 1 (Cloud) [] |
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Reviews: For about the first hour, not a plane is in the air. However on the ground you have every person involved telling their story so you can feel it. I know that these days you have action at the very beginning, but in 1970, when the film was released, plot first, then the action.
This is a sad film for each individual story, but some flights are like that! Sin has torn thru these stories, and it is a wonder that God didn’t blow it all up. Thankfully some passengers, especially a pastor, was there — and he provides some comic relief a little later on so God, as He did with Abraham and Lot, as Abraham pleaded with God to stave of destroying Sodom and Gommorah because Lot lived there.
All-in-all, it was a good film.
~ Kevin
Airport had enough plot and enough star power in its cast for three feature films, and it only encompassed about half of the complexity or characters found in Arthur Hailey's best-selling potboiler. Essentially built around 12 harrowing hours at a major Midwestern airport, the film had everything an audience of the period could have wanted -- suspense, romance, drama, and comedy -- all spread across a vast canvas. Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster) is the manager of Lincoln Airport, facing a night beset by the worst blizzard in a decade, a wife (Dana Wynter) who announces she wants a divorce, a primary runway blocked by an airliner stuck in a snowdrift, and a governing board ready to fire him. Bakersfeld's cynical, smooth-talking brother-in-law, Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), won't let up on his criticism of the management at Lincoln, but he has his own problems as well, mostly in the form of a young stewardess, Gwen Meighen (Jacqueline Bisset), who is pregnant by him and whom he finds he genuinely loves. Add to that the presence of an old lady stowaway (Helen Hayes) and a mentally disturbed passenger (Van Heflin) carrying a bomb, and there's more than enough plot to keep viewers engrossed for two hours plus. Airport became one of the top-grossing movies of its era, racking up seven-digit box-office numbers and spawning an entire film genre -- the disaster movie. With Jean Seberg, George Kennedy, Lloyd Nolan, Barry Nelson, and Maureen Stapleton filling out the rest of the leading roles, there was something for almost everyone in this film. The movie still has a lot to offer if only as a prime example of Hollywood at its most successfully glitzy, but, if possible, viewers should try and see the letterboxed version of Airport on DVD (released May 2001). ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide |
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