Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0012569797048
Format: Black & White
Item Dimensions: Array
Label: Warner Home Video
Languages: Array
Manufacturer: Warner Home Video
MPN: WARD79704D
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2007-06-05
Running Time: 112
Studio: Warner Home Video
Theatrical Release Date: 1949-02

World War II drama that shows the battles - on and off the field - that a general must fight in order to win the war. General Casey of the US Forces in England must fight congressional representatives and his own chain of command to be allowed to complete an important mission. He must get his men's planes out, during a small window of fair weather, in order to prevent the Germans from making more military jet planes. Although the general knows the success of his plan could decide whether the Germans get the upper hand in the war, it could also mean suicide for his men. Adapted from the William Wister Haines stage hit.
Command Decision (1949) takes on the kind of questions that Hollywood could never have raised during the war--questions about the cruel responsibilities of command, including the responsibility to spend a great many lives to save thousands more in the future. In 1943, from an American airbase in the English countryside, a campaign of daylight bombardment is being waged against aircraft factories in Germany. For much of the way to their targets and back, the bombers are bereft of fighter escort and at the mercy of the Luftwaffe. The mortality rate is shocking--but perhaps, for reasons that are not widely known, necessary. Clark Gable (himself an air war veteran) plays the commandant who has to call the next day's target, and the film never leaves command HQ; the closest we get to combat is a scene of an untrained crewman trying to land a crippled plane. Command Decision is earnest but outshone by the similarly focused Twelve O'Clock High. The main problem is that it's based on--and essentially remains--a play, static in setting and schematic in its arguments. Still, those arguments should be heard. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Rating:
Summary: Command Decision
Comment: One of the earliest attempts to show the politics and terrible strain on a leader's conscience as America debates the effectiveness of daylight bombing. Great dialogue, made more intense by Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, and Brian Donleavy. Not much in the way of plane shots.....I suggest Twelve O'Clock High for more of that, and we do not see the leaders crack as they do in Twelve O'Clock High. Not much in the way of extras.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Superb
Comment: Gable's best postwar effort. Gripping war film with superb supporting cast.

Neal Robertson

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: similar to 12 o'Clock High
Comment: Good movie if you like the older post WWII movies, especially if you liked 12 O'Clock high. Clark Gable is very good in this one.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Stiff and Memorized!
Comment: While the story line is good, the acting is stiff and memorized. Van Johnson gives the best performance, playing the part of "top kick" sargent that I would want to have working for me. Walter Pidgeon and Clark Gable are just repeating their lines, until the end when Gable catches on to his character. This film doesn't come close to Twelve O'Clock High.

---

Customer Rating:
Summary: Good guys versus good guys in a battle about competing strategies. Clark Gable dominates in a fine cast
Comment: If anyone has any doubts about why Clark Gable was the alpha dog among Hollywood's leading men from the mid-Thirties through the Forties, Command Decision is the film to see. This all-male movie tells the story of Brigadier General Casey Dennis (Gable), who in 1943 unleashes Operation Stitch on three German cities where German jet fighters are being developed. These fighters, if produced in any quantity, will be able to sweep Allied fighters from the skies and give the Germans air superiority again. But Operation Stitch means that the massed U. S. bombers flying in daylight must go far beyond Allied fighter protection. The first day of Operation Stitch eliminated one of the three target areas, but at horrendous cost...48 bombers were lost and more than 500 men. Dennis has the reputation among many of being a hard case. "Dennis is one of those boys whose brain is fascinated by guts," says one. "He loves this lousy war." Now General Dennis has ordered the second day's maximum effort, only to be faced with arrival at his headquarters of Major General Roland Kane (Walter Pidgeon), his superior who is fighting in Washington for more strategic bombing resources and who knows the kind of losses Operation Stitch is causing may make him lose that battle. On top of this, a Congressional committee has arrived, and among this group is Arthur Malcolm (Edward Arnold), a blow-hard Congressman who is not about to take any blame for combat losses. Looming over Dennis' shoulder is an old friend, Brigadier General Clifton Garnet (Brian Donlevy), who has arrived with Kane. The possibility that he may replace Dennis is apparent.

Among all these players, including the large number of skilled secondary actors such as Charles Bickford as a reporter, John Hodiak as a group bomber pilot and close friend of both Dennis and Garnet, and the actors who play key members of Dennis' staff, Gable effortlessly dominates the movie...and he does so while being part of an ensemble before ensemble acting was talked about. Gable is crisp and efficient, as well as able believably to establish the cost these losses are having on him. He gives a first-rate performance.

One of the reasons this movie works so well is that it hardly is a war story. Command Decision gives us a battle that takes place amidst the high political stakes of senior leadership. On the one hand, there is the argument for the allocation of resources for decisive action now that can probably lead to major benefits later. On the other hand, there is the argument that failing to bring along public opinion now can lead to grave losses and poor decisions later. So do we accept the horrendous loses in bombers and crews to wipe out right now the potential threat of German jet fighters, or do we take it slower with easier targets that can build public confidence in strategic daylight bombing? Since this movie was based on a successful stage play, there are great stretches of competing dialogue. That this doesn't become a dull set of debating points is because the dialogue is for the most part sharp and focussed, delivered with skill and conviction, and with little actorly bravado. Gable, Pidgeon and Donlevy do very well. The movie has its share of cliches -- the ever-resourceful, wise-cracking sergeant (Van Johnson); the humorous tear-jerker speech of a husband-to-be with a silly name, Captain George Washington Bellpepper Lee; the obsequious public relations underling; the birth of a baby which usually means the tear-filled death of the new father; the cynical, burned-out pilot who gets a dramatic change of heart -- but on balance they don't seem too bothersome when placed against the clash of strategies and ideas we're witnessing.

Command Decision is a well-crafted movie. Now, if only strategic bombing had ever accomplished even half of what all the air generals have always promised it would.

It's worth noting that Paul Kelly, a fine character actor, starred as General Casey Dennis when Command Decision opened on Broadway. The 1948 Tony award for best actor was split three ways that year. Tonys went to Henry Fonda for Mr. Roberts, to Basil Rathbone for The Heiress...and to Paul Kelly for Command Decision. Kelly was a distinctive actor who made a ton of B-movie programmers. I'm glad he finally had a chance to show what he could do and be recognized for it.

---