Written by: Sam Hanson
Actor, Flare Path
On an idle afternoon some years ago, I was leafing through a new edition of “Halliwell’s Film Guide”, and came across a film that I had not heard of before, but to which Halliwell had given one of his rare four-star ratings. The film was the 1945 “The Way to the Stars” (or, in North America, “Johnny in the Clouds”), starring John Mills, Rosamund John, Michael Redgrave and Douglass Montgomery; introducing Trevor Howard and Jean Simmons; with a screenplay by Terence Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald.
I was particularly struck by Halliwell’s brief description: “Generally delightful comedy drama suffused with tragic atmosphere but with very few flying shots, one of the few films which instantly bring back the atmosphere of the war in Britain for anyone who was involved”.
I eventually found a copy on DVD, and it lived up to Halliwell’s billing. On the surface a flag-waver promoting cooperation between the British and the Americans, it includes many of the themes familiar from other Rattigan plays, especially the hotel lobby with its rogues’ gallery of the haunted, fearful, naïve and self-deluded, but also Terence Rattigan’s lived experience as an air gunnery officer with 422 Squadron RCAF.
It was plain from the emphasis on dialogue and interior settings that the film was based on a play, and I set out to find it. An on-line search turned up a phrase that appears on the back cover of the acting edition of “Flare Path”: “Filmed as ‘The Way to the Stars’”. I found “Flare Path” through an on-line seller too well-known to need any advertising here, and as soon as it came I sat down to read it.
It became clear from the first page that “The Way to the Stars” was not simply a film version of the 1942 “Flare Path”. Rattigan had transferred the setting and some of the supporting characters from the play to the film: the Falcon Hotel, Dusty, and Swanson appear with different names, and the film landlady is a combination of Mrs. Oakes and Doris. The central stories, however, are completely different.
I decided to recommend “Flare Path” to the OLT Selection Committee, and here it is in time for Remembrance Day. I hope it provides the audience with a rewarding evening. So will the film.