Gary Cooper

Charles Bickford

Ralph Bellamy

Rod Steiger

Elizabeth Montgomery

Fred Clark

James Daly

Jack Lord

Peter Graves

Darren McGavin

Robert F. Simon

Charles Dingle

Dayton Lummis

Tom McKee

Stephen Roberts

Herbert Heyes

Robert Brubaker

Phil Arnold

Ian Wolfe

Will Wright

Gregory Walcott

Otto Preminger

Hans F. Koenekamp

Russell Saunders

Gordon Bau

Stanley Jones

Howard Shoup

Dimitri Tiomkin

Jack McEdward

Douglas Keeney

Emmet Lavery

Folmar Blangsted

Milton Sperling

William L. Kuehl

Malcolm C. Bert

Sam Leavitt

Drama

The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell

Warner Bros. Pictures

United States Pictures

United States of America

CinemaSerf

Gary Cooper is perfectly adequate in this rather dry telling of the court-martial of a pioneering American general who, according to this film anyway, prophesied the hitherto unimaginable rise in importance of air power in conflict as well as predicting that an attack on Hawaii by Japan was likely to succeed against the relatively ill-defended islands. Demoted and posted to an administrative job in Texas, things come to an head when he becomes so frustrated by the intransigence of his army superiors (this is before the USAF existed as a separate entity) that he goes to the press and is subsequently tried for gross insubordination. The narrative is interesting insofar as it illustrates the reluctance of the senior services to acknowledge the significance of these new machines - partly ignorance, partly a reluctance to allow anything else to vie for the limited resources available. The court proceedings, though, are rather dull and dreary. Ralph Bellamy turns in a spirited performance as his lawyer Reid, and Rod Steiger is bullish effective as his determined prosecutor but the whole look and feel of the film just lacks for weight and substance. There is precious little to excite here, it may be prophetic, but it's very wordy and there is a real dearth of action which makes the 100 minutes or so it takes to tell this story seem considerably longer. It does feature plenty of familiar faces which helps pass the time, but sadly this is a really rather unremarkable biopic that probably didn't even rock the fourth row, let alone the world!

English

The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell

Cast

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