Flight Into Darkness

L'équipage

France

1935

111 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

French

Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
1
2
3
4
5

SCR Joseph Kessel, Anatole Litvak

CAST Annabella, Charles Vanel, Jean Murat, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Daniel Mendaille, Raymond Cordy, Suzanne Desprès, Alexandre Rignault

ED Henri Rust, Jean-Paul Le Chanois

MUSIC Arthur Honegger, Jean Wiener

Filmed in 1935, L’équipage was released in the US in 1938 as Flight into Darkness to cash in on the recent marriage of its leading lady Annabella to Hollywood hearthrob Tyrone Power. The actress stars as Mme. Maurey, wife of a much-older aviator (Charles Vanel). While her husband soars into the wild blue yonder, Mme. Maury dallies with handsome young Capitane Thelis (Jean Murat). Though deeply in love with the heroine, Thelis tries to remain loyal to his friend Maury. —The Movie Detective

Director

Anatole Litvak

Born in Kiev, Michael Anatole Litwak was a stage actor and assistant director as a teenager. He entered Soviet cinema in 1923, working in Nordkino studios as a set decorator and assistant director. He directed his first film, the 1925 release Tatiana (Hearts and Dollars), but left the Soviet Union that year for Germany, where he edited G.W. Pabst’s Die Freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street, 1925), assistant directed, and helmed the early ‘30s features Dolly Macht Karriere (1931), Nie Wieder Liebe (1932), and Das Lied Einer Nacht (1933). Fleeing the Nazis, Litvak directed films in England and France, among them the international hit Mayerling (1936). He came to Hollywood in 1937, where he helmed many handsome and polished features, specializing in crime films (The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Castle on the Hudson, Out of the Fog) and romantic dramas (The Sisters, All This and Heaven Too). He worked on several Army documentaries during World War II, and co-directed… read more