in Oscars Fortnight

Airport (1970)

Whenever we do these weeks or months around a certain theme, it’s all about finding the different connections that pop up between disparate films. Today’s entry has a few of those, since for the second day in a row, we’re reviewing a Burt Lancaster movie where he’s part of a larger ensemble, but also like the last movie I reviewed, happens to feature a score by Alfred Newman. Considering the 31-year difference between Wuthering Heights and Airport, it’s not all that surprising to learn that this would be Newman’s final film score. The presence of Newman and Lancaster illuminates the fact that Airport is a movie very much catering to a 1970s audience, but also has its roots in old-fashioned Hollywood entertainment.

Though I had a pretty decent time with Airport (despite its many flaws), I was a little surprised at how negative its critical reception was at the time of its release. Most of the contemporary reviews point to it being B-movie material full of clichés that felt incredibly old-fashioned. It reminds me a bit of the reviews that accompanied the first Rocky when it came out, which feels pretty strange that these films were regarded as retrograde at the time, when crowd-pleasers of their ilk would actually end up being the future of mainstream movies. Maybe film critics were just spoiled by the ground-breaking New Hollywood cinema of the ’70s, and couldn’t see that a return to more comforting entertainment was near on the horizon.

The titular airport at the center of the movie is the fictional Lincoln International, located in Chicago, where a nasty snowstorm has become a thorn in the side of airport manager Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster). First, a plane gets stuck on the runway, so he has to call in a crack team, led by mechanic Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), to try and pry the plane’s wheels from the snow. Then we’re introduced to Mel’s brother-in-law, a pilot named Vernon Demerest (Dean Martin), who has been philandering with a stewardess (Jean Seberg) who later reveals that she’s pregnant. Mel’s marriage is also currently on the rocks, but if that wasn’t enough, there’s also a mentally unstable man named Guerrero (Van Heflin) who has brought a suitcase containing a bomb to the airport with the intent of bringing it aboard Vernon’s flight that night to Rome.

The first person to suspect Guerrero’s plot is his wife Inez (Maureen Stapleton) who after reading a letter from a travel agency thinks that Guerrero may be planning to set off the bomb mid-flight and leave her and their family the insurance money. She heads to the airport after the flight has taken off and alerts the airline, so while on board the captain and the flight crew must figure out a way to (literally) diffuse the situation before Guerrero sets off the bomb. However, this becomes much trickier once the flight crew grabs the bomb from Guerrero and there’s a stand-off between him and the crew. Guerrero is then able to scramble away to the plane’s bathroom where he sets off the bomb and blows a hole in the plane, which creates another conundrum for the crew, who must now figure out a way to land the plane back at Lincoln airport where the snowstorm still hasn’t relented.

Airport, is of course, a bit of an odd choice for a Best Picture nominee, since the dialogue is a bit clunky, the casting panders to audiences’ appetite for big stars, and the filmmaking is fairly utilitarian (though its abundant use of split-screen is pretty groovy). But, the movie was a colossal hit, making $128 million at the box office, which would be pretty good even for a movie released in 2024, let alone in 1970. Also, though the Academy had no way of knowing it then, the success of Airport made it a turning point in 1970s cinema, as the disaster movie would become a box office juggernaut during the next decade, and it all more or less starts with Airport.

That said, Airport‘s status as the first big disaster movie doesn’t necessarily mean it was the best disaster movie. This is because Airport doesn’t quite have the formula figured out for this type of film, as it spends far too much of its first half setting up characters with story arcs that never really pay off in satisfying ways. Also, it just takes way too long to make its way toward any sort of action, as the truly exciting moments in the film (or what you would consider “the disaster”) don’t take place until nearly 2 hours into the movie. Still, there is something a little charming about the fact that the movie takes its time and doesn’t feel nearly as stupid as its more modern big-budget descendants.

In fact, the lack of action for most of the duration of the movie makes that final 20 minutes or so all the more intense and watchable. I just wish the movie had gotten there a little quicker, since as much as I love all the ’70s fashion and insights into air travel of that era, Airport just feels a bit messy from a storytelling standpoint. I can’t blame the filmmakers too much for this, since no one had figured out how to do this type of movie for a modern audience yet. But it still can’t help but make the movie feel like a dry run for what the disaster movie would become, rather than any sort of definitive example of it.

Speaking of what the disaster movie would become, the death knell of the genre of course started a decade later when it was parodied by Mildly Pleased favorite Airplane! From what I’ve read, it seems that the plot of Airplane! was a bit more influenced by Airport 1975 than the original, as well as 1958’s Zero Hour! However, the original Airport is shot almost exactly like Airplane! (or vice versa, rather) and features the same stone-faced tone without the jokes, which really just makes me want to go watch Airplane! again rather than watching one of Airport‘s many sequels. This speaks to Airport‘s legacy resting less on the quality of the film itself, but more in that it kicked off a major genre while also being responsible for that genre’s (and perhaps cinema’s) greatest film parody.