I'll admit I wasn't expecting much here - I'd seen the tail-end of the movie a while back, and it didn't look too hot, but I'm a wannabe John Wayne completest, so I took it upon myself to watch this 1953 effort as an outward and visible sign of my devotion.

It's a stunning film, for those who appreciate such things. The Duke plays against type to a degree here. He's a WWII-era transport pilot in this one whose plane goes off-course and crashes in an uncharted region of Labrador in -70F (-56C) temperatures. He's not exactly a hopeless neurotic - this is John Wayne, after all - but you can see his confidence falter as it becomes increasingly likely that he and his men aren't going to make it out alive. This is paralleled by the story of the search pilots, whose confidence also wanes as they poke around the confusing landscape trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack. Great performances on that side of the story, too, most notably by Andy Devine of all people - the veteran John Wayne fan keeps waiting for the comic relief from this fine character actor, and its absence adds to the overall tension. The juxtaposition of the two stories underscores the importance of friendship, devotion, courage, cooperation, and creativity. For the history-minded among you, it is also piques one's interest in radio and aviation technology of the WWII period - in ways the Duke's "fighter jock" movies like "The Flying Tigers" and "Flying Leathernecks" really do not. This is a remarkable film, well written in Hemmingwayesque sparse, masculine prose and effectively photographed in stark black and white. Highly recommended, especially for the odd duck who still believes that John Wayne couldn't act. 8/10

Slow moving and deliberate, but an over-looked William Wellman gem. Based on an Ernest K. Gann novel, ISLAND IN THE SKY has John Wayne playing Captain Dooley, who is forced to land his C-47 transport plane in the vast white wilderness of Labrador. Harsh windy weather, bitter cold, no real shelter and very little food for Dooley and his five man crew. Surviving long enough to be rescued is utmost among thoughts of the dedicated airmen. The uncharted tundra, ice and fog works against the searchers in finding the fatigued Dooley and his crew. The human condition and spirit and fortitude of mankind itself is foremost in this talky drama. The very talented cast includes: Lloyd Nolan, Andy Devine, Harry Carey Jr, Paul Fix, Hal Baylor, Jimmy Lydon and Carl "Alfalfa" Switzer. Over-shadowed by another Wellman/Wayne vehicle THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY.

"Island in the Sky" has long vanished from television station inventories: I last saw this movie in, best guess, 1960. But I've never forgotten it, & two years ago I tracked down the knuckle-biter Ernest K. Gann novel on which the film is strongly based.

When a transport plane goes down in the white-blindness of sub-arctic Labrador its crew is in dire straits: howling winds, icy weather, almost no food, and no shelter or heat source. Fellow pilots & aircrews organize an air search, but the Labrador landscape they search is vast, monotonous & unforgiving of downed airmen: the searching crews know they're in a race against time, that the odds against their downed mates' survival decrease with every tick of the clock. The film sublimely depicts the searchers long hours of tedium in their inadequately heated Douglas C-47 flight decks, all the while with their hope for sighting their downed comrades dimming. They battle the ice-fog, the weather fronts, the monotonous vastness of the landscape, the limits of their aircraft and radios and compasses, and the human limits of their flying and navigational skills and their powerful fatigue. Yet nobody will give up the search: each of the rescue crews knows that they themselves might, at nature's or a fouled sparkplug's whim, have been the men crash-landed in the frigid wasteland beneath their wings.

We also see the plight of the downed aircrew scrabbling in their plane's wreck for morsels of food, shelter, clothing, and with their frozen fingers struggling to whirl the crank of a "Gibson Girl" emergency radio transmitter of dubious value. We feel their growing, chilling despair: after all, they're veteran airmen who know the odds against a search crew sighting their snow-covered wreck in this sub-arctic expanse where, from the air, every lake, hummock, snowfield, depression, hill and endless sweep of terrain looks alike. They know their would-be rescuers are flying over uncharted space, without a single reliable reference point; and they know that magnetic compasses (long before GPS satellite navigation came on the scene)in the Labrador region are subject to grievously false readings - they know the searchers could well be flying the same search routes over and over again without even realizing it: and the search crews know it too. And because there are no distinguishable landmarks, and because compasses are untrustworthy, the shivering men know that even if they are sighted it's likely that a rescue plane at the limit of its fuel could well be unable to relay accurate headings or recognizable landmarks to the crew of a follow-up aircraft.

The script neatly follows Gann's novel & its spirit: man and his pitifully inadequate, yet much-ballyhooed technology pitted against nature, against what has been called "the benign indifference of the universe". Gann was a veteran transport pilot whose novels, and this one is no exception, convey the grim obstacles airmen faced in aviation's primitive days. Gann's characters aren't heroes: they're just guys who happen to operate equipment which, like the men themselves, has finite limitations in the face of remorseless nature. Like the novel's, the film's dialogue is terse, the casting superb: you can imagine each actor being the man Gann wrote about in his novel. "Island in the Sky" is a no-frills film: no special effects worth mentioning, and none are necessary. You get to be on the frozen earth in the middle of nowhere, and on the flight deck with the weary, half-snowblind, anxious search crews. You feel the fear, the anxiety, the pressure, the cold, the crews' frustration with the limits of their technology and abilities.

I'd love to see "Island in the Sky" come out on DVD: a solid, bare-bones, no glamor, no mercy story well told.