Robert Aldrich’s 1965 star-studded film is an intimate epic, serving up human-scale drama on a vast landscape as an oil company plane carrying fifteen men crash lands during a sandstorm in the desert enroute to Benghazi. Two passengers die instantly and one is gravely hurt, leaving a dozen men of differing temperaments to try to figure out how to survive and return to civilization.
Chief among them is the de facto leader, Frank Towns (James Stewart), the pilot who blames himself for the deaths, even though his co-pilot, alcoholic Lew Moran (Richard Attenborough), missed the key weather report that would have initially grounded the flight. Also onboard—or now offboard—are a British captain named Harris (Peter Finch), his duty-shirking sergeant Watson (Ronald Fraser), mentally unstable oil worker Trucker Cobb (Ernest Borgnine), wisecracking Scotsman Crow (Ian Bannen), and moody German Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Krüger), among others.
Once this international stew of stranded males realize that a rescue seems highly unlikely, they begin to address the realities of their situation, some favoring action (such as a dangerous exodus on foot to a far distant waterhole), while others seem resigned to an uncertain fate.
The gamechanger turns out to be Dorfmann, a self-professed “aeroplane designer” who rallies the men in a seemingly quixotic effort to build a new plane out of the wreckage of the old one, a vessel eventually dubbed the “Phoenix.” Towns thinks the idea literally won’t fly and the tussle for authority between him and Dorfmann becomes the dramatic linchpin of the story. Towns eventually capitulates, presciently observing that “the little men with the slide rules and the computers are going to inherit the earth.”
Based on the titular 1964 novel by Elleston Trevor, The Flight of the Phoenix benefits from surehanded direction by Aldrich (he would make another famous ensemble film two years later, The Dirty Dozen), who maintains a focus on the existential psychological strains the men experience while also steadily ratcheting up the tension as they attempt an impossible feat even as all grow weaker due to the punishing heat and dwindling water supply (fortunately, they have a cargo of dates to eat).
Presented with a luminous 2K digital restoration, extras include a new conversation between filmmaker Walter Hill and film scholar Alain Silver, a new interview with biographer Donald Dewey on actor James Stewart and his service as a bomber pilot, and a leaflet with an essay by filmmaker and critic Gina Telaroli.
Still gripping nearly 60 years after its initial release, this psychologically grounded disaster epic is highly recommended for classic film collections in public libraries.