The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell

Customer Reviews:

Standing tall before the man.......2007-05-26

Having been a recipient of the US Air Force Civil Air Patrol General Billy Mitchell Certificate of Proficiency, in my youth, I confess much respect for the man. The film is, generally speaking, true to the history of one of the major proponents of the new technology - Air Power. Mitchell demonstrates that higher order of duty, the one where the truth, as one sees it, is more important than just falling in line or following orders. Ironically the United States Army was to make just that point many years later at the Nuremberg Trials, after winning a war which was so much depended on Mitchell's dream.

A part of the film as important as the quest for an adequate Air Force is Mitchell's forecast of a Japanese attack on the US, by air at Hawaii almost two decades before the event. Like Mohan of the Navy, to attuned officers it was a question of when not if - surprise was never an option.

Michell was a short man, but we are dealing with Otto Preminger here whose hero must be head and shoulders above the crowd. Billy Mitchell was a wlidcat, to borrow an aviation term from the Navy, he was the kind of person we always need and the film is true to that.

Military Update.......2006-11-10

The story of Billy Mitchell should be told over and over. His court martial records show that he predicted the attack on the Hawaian Islands
by sea and air. His prediction was made at his trial in 1925. Too bad
no one was listening.

How about today? Is Washington listening now? I hope so.

Great movie story that happens to be true.

I found it riviting........2005-12-07

Today, all movies have to have sex, violence, swearing, computer generated mosters and spcial effects in order to be interesting, because the plots and characters are so thin. But this movie, mostly about a trial held in a warehouse, I could not tear myself away from it. Even though it didn't have any love triangles or karate kicks or explosians or anything like that in it, The power of the story itself was enough. They didn't even show the air crashes that precipitated the trial. I wish there were more movies like this today: drama, integrity, characters with purpose and values, and a plot where the stakes were genuinly high: the security of the future of America.

Elizabeth Montgomery on DVD.......2005-06-01

She is one of the miost beautiful of all Hollywood actresses as well as among the most beloved, thanks largely to her years playing Samantha on BEWITCHED. She was Hollywood royalty, the daughter of the dashing patriot Robert Montgomery, a man with huge influence in the movie world, an actor of light comedy who matured during the War years into a serious actor, then a director and producer with enormous resources. And yet Elizabeth Montgomery's large screen appearances can be counted on the fingers of one hand. What happened?

She is simply sublime in this, her very first movie role (though some say she appears in THEY WERE EXPENDABLE in the short bit where Robert Montgomery remembers his family back at home). She made a big impression on moviegoers, and Otto Preminger took every care to make her look luscious, designing her period clothes with care and giving her many closeups, some of them quite extraneous to his story of a man on trial for vilifying the Armed Services with his rash Cassandra-like predictions of doom for the Air Force. People must have wondered what was Elizabeth Montgomery's character even doing in the picture? It is certainly dragged in from left field. And yet she was a welcome attraction in this movie. That one pink and orange Schiaparelli concoction Preminger dressed her in made her look like a tall, cool parfait. And yet what happened after this movie? Nothing--not another movie for seven years -- not until BEACH PARTY (1963) where she's only in the movie for like twenty seconds! It's totally unfair.

It is said by those in the know that Elizabeth was in line to play the parts Preminger was planning for her to take in his upcoming films, BONJOUR TRISTESSE and Shaw's SAINT JOAN. She wiuld have been perfect in both, of course. Was it that she wouldn;t go along with his notorious casting couch system and that's why she lost both parts to the unbalanced and yet quite talented Iowan Jean Seberg? And she was relegated to appearing on TV dramas including her own father's vanity showcase? Poor Miss Montgomery married the much older Gig Young and tried to get away from her golden trap, and yet she never could until she unleashed Gig Young (who had been a bosom buddy of her Dad's) and stopped playing Daddy's little girl, much like Jane Fonda had to do later on in the 1960s. Anyway let this wonderful film stand in as a testament of a career that took a much different direction. But it could have been Elizabeth Montgomery who played all the parts that say, Shirley Jones or Natalie Wood later did. She was just squelched.

Gary Cooper basically snoozes thru his role, in .......2004-11-18

this excellent between the wars story of a very important subject; military air superiority. Ralph Bellamy rather than Cooper leads a stellar cast in a meaty role as Congressman Frank Reid, who defended Gen. Mitchell during his court-martial by a stupid militay establishment stuck in the 19th century. A fine historical drama. Unfortunately, it took Pearl Harbor almost 20 years in the future to finally vindicate Mitchell. In a sinister little moment at the beginning of the movie, the panning camera lingered, for just a moment, on an Asian dignitary, in the crowd witnessing Gen. Mitchell's pilots bombing & sinking a battleship for the first time with only airplanes.
A very interesting movie, if you are into this sort of thing. I liked it very much.

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