Would The High and the Mighty (1954) be so fondly remembered if it had not been unseen for the past 25 years (and virtually unseen for 50 years)? Never before released on video or DVD, and not broadcast on American television since 1979, this is a movie that has acquired the status of a lost masterpiece. Despite an impeccable restoration and two-disc DVD presentation by Paramount Home Entertainment, the movie is sadly not a lost masterpiece. Badly dated, what was hailed in its time as suspenseful drama now plays as overwrought, overlong, lethargic soaper.

The story is simple. A passenger plane takes off from Hawaii to San Francisco with about a dozen passengers (including Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, Jan Sterling, Phil Harris and Robert Newton), all of whom have backstories which we are shown via flashback. John Wayne (in a part originally meant for Spencer Tracy) plays a washed-up former captain who is now relegated to being Robert Stack's co-pilot due to an accident years earlier. Eventually, conflicts arise among the passengers in back and between the pilots in front as the plane itself develops serious engine trouble. Will it reach the coast OK, or will it have to make a water landing?

It's simply not suspenseful, scary or exciting, all of which it's meant to be. The flashbacks are turgid. The pilot conflicts are unconvincing, despite Wayne's strong (and overall brief) presence. It's also impossible to watch Stack without thinking of Airplane (1980) (which in fairness is not the fault of this movie). And the heavy emphasis on what to do if the plane makes a crash landing is tedious to anyone who's been on an airplane in the past fifty years. A moment where a passenger pulls a gun on another passenger is laughably melodramatic, and what happens to the gun afterwards is flat-out ludicrous. There's just not enough of a story here with believable and exciting conflicts. Somehow, The High and the Mighty garnered six Academy Award nominations and won for Dmitri Tiomkin's famous score. While it's a fine melody in and of itself, it feels overblown for this material and is used too often. (It actually sounds more suitable for a romantic Broadway musical than for a suspense film.)

It's likely that many who saw this movie in 1954 have held it close to their hearts because they remember the novelty of seeing such a modern subject on screen. Commercial aviation for ordinary people had only just really begun, and the idea of a movie detailing that experience and depicting something going wrong was quite new. Of course, there have been scores of airplane disaster movies since then, and scores of other movies in which airplane crashes play a smaller part, and the novelty is long gone. The High and the Mighty might be the grandaddy of this minigenre, but it has not withstood the test of time. While the novelty might have been enough to make this a commercial hit in 1954, the quality of the storytelling and filmmaking - so often good enough to make dated subject matter feel irrelevant when watching classic movies today - is too pedestrian to sustain the movie in 2005.

Director William Wellman was one of the greats, but ironically his biggest commercial success is not a typical Wellman movie. Usually associated with action and movement, he's unable to bring much of either to this film. Most crucially, he does not attempt to create tension out of the confined space of the airplane. Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and Rear Window (1954) proved that confined spaces could work brilliantly on screen, but in The High and the Mighty we often cut away to a ship, an airport, another plane, or other locations in flashbacks, thus deflating any tension which might have been building up inside the plane.

Even historian Kevin Brownlow, interviewed in one of the DVD's extras, guards his enthusiasm. Listen carefully to his comments and you'll notice that he acknowledges the film's great success and mentions certain impressive elements (the score, the casting, etc), but he refrains from calling the overall film a great work. Leonard Maltin, on the other hand, clearly loves this movie, and he is therefore well-suited to providing scene-specific commentary along with William Wellman, Jr. and a few cast members. Whether you like the movie or not, Maltin is always instructive and enjoyable to listen to since he is such a complete historian and fan. He also provides introductions to the movie itself and the myriad of extras on Disc 2, which are outstanding and well worth watching.

"The Batjac Story" is an interesting documentary about the history of Wayne's company, which started as Wayne-Fellows Productions in 1951 before becoming Batjac Productions when Wayne bought out co-producer Bob Fellows in 1954. Wayne was highly involved in the productions of his pictures, and his vast set experience made him an effective, hands-on producer.

"Stories From the Set" features just that, with such cast members as Pedro Gonzales-Gonzales, Doe Avedon, and Robert Stack (in an archival interview) sharing their anecdotes. Three biographical featurettes focus on director Wellman, composer Tiomkin, and novelist Ernest Gann, with the Tiomkin episode especially worthwhile. A shrewd businessman and negotiator, he was never under contract to a studio, deciding instead to work freelance, and he was the the first composer to have a publicist and campaign for an Oscar®.

Further extras detail the restoration work required for The High and the Mighty (a tough job because the negative had become badly worn) and place it in the context of film history. A featurette entitled "Flying in the Fifties" is a charming look at the glamour and excitement of flying in those days, and rounding things out are trailers, premiere footage, and a photo gallery.

This is just the first of the long-unseen Batjac films to reach DVD. Others are on the way, including at least one which really is a long-lost masterpiece: Seven Men From Now (1956), directed by Budd Boetticher, currently set for a December release.

For more information about The High and the Mighty, visit Paramount Home Entertainment. To order The High and the Mighty, go to TCM Shopping.

by Jeremy Arnold