Wry salute to air aces

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33966, 6 October 1975, Page 16

Wry salute to air aces

(By

RUSSELL JONES)

Like most boys of my generation I grew up revering the Few with an awe nurtured by Biggies books and encouraged by the great air race from London to Christchurch. My first flight would have been in a Tiger Moth if dad had agreed to part with 10 bob, and of course I was going to join the air force. Ony the computer accuracy and blind death of Vietnam could rob war-planes of their romance.

If Biggies had been an American he might have found himself barnstorming in the 20s after the brief glory of dogfights over France. George Roy Hill, who conceived, produced, and directed “The Great Waldo Pepper” (Avon, Y certificate) must have been a boy in the barnstorming days before aircraft lost their canvas-and-

wire fragility and pilots their devil-may-care fascination, for he has made a film about flying for boys of all ages, a film which is much more than a “Jonathan Livingstone Seagull” for humans. The opening scenes perfectly sum up a little boy’s hero worship and introduce the hero (Robert Redford). Waldo Pepper is a fictional character, an amalgam of the heroes of flying before it became a mail service and a means of mass transport, and although he is almost broke he earns his gasoline by giving joy-rides and his meals by recounting past glories. For him, flying is the only thing worth dying for. But he is only the second best pilot in the’world. Ernst Kessler is better. Pepper did not meet Kessler in the skies above France, but he feels he should have, and tells everyone how Kessler saluted him and flew away after the guns on Pepper’s aircraft jammed. The first part of the film,

when accidents are hilarious affairs resulting in broken bones at worst, does not prepare the audience for the harshness of sudden death, nor for Pepper’s bitter reaction.

Kessler (Bo Brundin) and Pepper finally meet, ironically to act out the World War I incident for a Hollywood film about Kessler. But once the incident has been filmed they peel off to do battle, and some wonderful shots of the aircraft in action follow.

Although “The Great Waldo Pepper” is superficially a film in the good old escapist tradition, the director makes some wry and pertinent comments about men still fighting a war which ended a decade previdusly, and about the roles of flyers and flying. Redford’s performance matches his efforts in other Hill films — “Butch Cassidy” and “The Sting” — while doing nothing to damage his matinee idol reputation.