Broken Journey (1948) User Reviews

British version of "Five Came Back" Alps-style

[blanche-2 · 6/10 · 13 February 2012]

This film seems to be somewhat based on the John Farrow-directed film, "Five Came Back," though I suppose this 1948 film uses a fairly derivative plot and could have been based on a lot of things.

A plane crashes into the Alps, but the passengers and crew survive. However, the radio is out. On board: an opera singer, Perami (Francis L. Sullivan), a movie star (Joanna Dane), a man in an iron long (John Barber), his nurse (Sonia Holm), the pilot, James Donald (Bill Halverton), the flight attendant (Phyllis Calvert), and other assorted characters.

The film revolves around the ideas of courage, selfishness, and self-sacrifice as the passengers fight to survive as their food runs out and the cold settles into their bones, and they all start to get on one another's nerves.

The Alps scenes are spectacular, and their vastness and desolate appearance brought "Lost Horizon" to mind.

All in all, pretty good, with some decent performances. You'll see better versions of this plot, but you'll also see worse.

Getting Lost in the Alps

[wes-connors · 5/10 · 4 February 2012]

A small plane crash lands in the snowy, desolate Alps. Luckily, the mostly British passengers and crew survive with nary a scratch. They don't even seem to mind the cold very much. Her fur coat keeps movie star Margot Grahame (as Joanna Dane) warm. But the lack of cigarettes, lipstick and record albums gets some passengers testy. Operatic voiced Francis L. Sullivan (as Perami) plays his surviving vinyl. How to get civilization to notice and rescue them becomes a major concern. Survival and self-sacrifice are themes. These are nicely evidenced by "iron lung" man Grey Blake (as John Barber). Pretty stewardess Phyllis Calvert (as Mary Johnstone) falls in love with heroic pilot James Donald (as Bill Haverton). Their "Broken Journey" is slow and uninvolved, but nicely edited.

***** Broken Journey (4/14/48) Ken Annakin ~ Phyllis Calvert, Margot Grahame, James Donald, Francis L. Sullivan

Baby, It's Cold Inside

[writers_reign · 6/10 · 2 June 2017]

This is yet another take on Hollywood Bomber Crew or, if you will, a disparate group of people thrown together by circumstances beyond their control. In this case they are the passengers and crew of an airliner that crashlands in the Alps. No one suffers even a single scratch, not even the passenger in an iron lung - a device which successfully nails the era as early post-war. As they agonise as to their next move - should they attempt to go for help or stand pat on the off-chance they'll be spotted - we get to know their individual strength and weaknesses, very much the mixture as before. With one bona fide 'star' in Phyllis Calvert and several stalwarts from the Second Eleven - Guy Rolfe, James Donald, Charles Victor, Francis L. Sullivan and even a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit by Bonar Colleano this is a pleasant enough time-passer.

Take the Train.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 30 January 2012]

In post-war Europe, a passenger plane piloted by Guy Rolfe and James Donald, loses and engine over the Alps and must crash land in a snowfield surrounded by glaciers and snow-capped mountains. A storm blocked radio communications so there's no certainty that their distress call was received. After many tribulations and a few deaths the survivors are rescued.

What stands out most in this film is the location shooting. You have rarely seen such a picturesque atmosphere of jagged Alps, knee-deep snow, and treacherous glacial chasms. The staged scenes are seamlessly blended with the location shots. They did a marvelous job, so much so that it hardly looks more hostile than inviting -- a kind of fairyland. Not an abrasive surface or a bit of vegetation in sight.

That may be part of the problem. John Wayne's "Island in the Sky" had a similar plot, with an airplane down in the frozen woods of Canada, but the survivors looked uncomfortable, dazed, and on the verge of despair.

Here, the survivors -- none of them harmed in the landing -- are the usual diverse lot but none seems particularly distressed. Of course they're worried. The batteries are about to run out. Some of the passengers are cowards and other are narcissists. But they don't complain about the cold and they don't do much to prepare for a possible search plane. And there ARE a few search planes, so their location is known. As the first aircraft buzzes past, high overhead, the others do what all such accident survivors must do -- they stand in the open and shout at it while waving their hands. I tried shouting at an airplane a mile away once. It didn't work. Nobody has even got a jerry can full of petrol ready to burn and create some smoke. There's a Very pistol but they think too late of finding it and, at that, the door is stuck. The rescue is adventitious, as if nobody could think of anything that grew organically from the script.

It's almost completely unrealistic. At least the two aviators should have known better, even if the aging movie actress and the pompous opera tenor didn't.

Nothing wrong with the performances. James Donald, as the co-pilot and radio operator, is such a sincere and likable actor that he brings a level of stability to anything he's in. Phylis Calvert is pretty.

It's not the actors that make this as routine a story as it is. And it's not the photography. It's the script, frozen fast in the region of the unremarkable.

an early disaster film,I don't get the very negative reviews.

[ib011f9545i · 6/10 · 2 November 2023]

I assume it is not a spoiler to say this film is about a plane crash in the alps.

If you are a fan of 1940s british films you will recognise most of the cast and perhaps the writer ,the director and the writer of the music.

I am a big fan of old British films,and films featuring forms of transport so I like seeing this one.

I am not saying it is an undiscovered classic but I think it is watchable.

Some of the comments on here are rather harsh.

I watch a lot of old films and this easier to enjoy in 2023 than many made at this time.

The script writer was Robert Westerby whose work I have come to like and look out for.

This was made in 1948 and characters are still going on about the war.

As in most later disaster film the characters are mixed bunch,I can't say they a believeable mix but we must remember that at this time foreign travel was not common for ordinary people.

IMDB is full of people who know a lot about cinema history,can anyone think of any older disaster films than this one?

Who cares about this lot?

[AAdaSC · 4/10 · 22 March 2011]

A plane crashes in the arctic and the film follows the efforts of the survivors to get rescued with a few casualties on the way. There is even a passenger in an iron lung!

The cast aren't worth mentioning because they are all interchangeable and it is impossible to identify with any of them. As regards the story, nothing really happens to hold the viewer's interest. You have to wait about 45 minutes before the first bit of action after the plane crashes. And this is what happens - some bloke slips off a ledge and doesn't fall very far. Then a bit of snow lands on his face. It's hilarious.

There is also a fault with the whole psychology of the film - most characters seem to be quite horrid to each other, when in reality they would all be pulling together.

It's a slow moving film, devoid of any tension or drama and it is just not quite interesting enough. "Five Came Back" from 1939 is a much better film about a plane crash and a group of survivors.

Nice example of a pretty standard genre formula

[rdoyle29 · 6/10 · 31 October 2017]

An airplane flying over the Alps has engine trouble and has to land on a glacier. The radio is busted, so they can't tell folks where they are. The passengers and crew try to survive with dwindling supplies and little chance of being found. A fairly typical disaster film scenario where a cast of colourful characters including an actress, a boxer, an opera singer and a man in an iron lung face a crisis. The cast of British character actors unsurprisingly do a fairly good job with the formula.

Boring Plane Ride

[Michael_Elliott · 13 August 2012]

Broken Journey (1948)

** (out of 4)

Forgettable "disaster" film has a plane crashing in the Alps and the variety of people on board must try to figure out a way to rescue themselves as well as not fight each other. The entire disaster genre has always been popular whether it was in the silent era, those films of the 30s like SAN FRANSISCO or IN OLD CHICAGO and going all the way up to the craze in the 1970s. With that said, most of these films are still well remembered by film buffs but I guess it's easy to see why BROKEN JOURNEY has pretty much been forgotten. This really does seem like a drawn out, boring version of FIVE CAME BACK and this here doesn't feature a single character to care for. I thought the entire group of survivors were either annoying, boring or they just weren't anyone to root or care for. This is certainly a death nail in a disaster picture like this because the fun thing is seeing the wide range of people trying to cope with the situation and each other but there's just no one here to care about. Another problem is that the entire situation is just way too pretty. I mean, just take a look at the crash sequence, which seems like a simple landing on the side of a mountain because of how easy and pretty it all looked. The situation that the people are in is never dramatic because no matter what happens something good will take place so you never once feel as if these people are in danger. The performances range from good to decent and the cinematography is without question the best thing going for the film. The non-stop dialogue has the characters saying one boring thing after another and in the end there's just no reason to watch this.

Not the Missing Chapter from Pan Am

[The_Dying_Flutchman · 5/10 · 30 January 2012]

"Broken Journey" 1948, but made the year before, is a kind of Airship of Fools and all of that is clearly manifest in the skies above. One of the first things we see is a male passenger being given a magazine to entertain him while he's on his flight to destiny. The magazine is momentarily shown and much to my surprise was a nudist mag! I've heard of flying the friendly skies, but this was only 1948! The Europeans have been ahead of the Americans in this regard, but I had no idea how far ahead they were in those halcyon post war years. Anyway, on the side of the flying crate can be seen the name of the airline --"Fox Airways"; are we to think this far back that anything even remotely connected with Rupert Murdoch is doomed to failure? I know, there is no connection, but thinking might make it so.

High opera also plays a part so very high in the European Alps and a single cracked 78 rpm record of an unknown opera whenever played can drive this viewer to some small chuckle. That chuckle turns to guffaw when the crescendo of a certain dark haired woman passenger sheds tears every time its played. And then that guffaw issues forth in rails of derisive laughter as the shrieks become ever more ghastly and forced! Guy Rolfe, later a horror player, is the pilot and like a good ship's captain does everything he can to soothe and save his charges, not exactly a barrel of monkeys, but not exactly a Noah's ark of losers, either.

James Donald, also a horror star of some old style renown, plays the co-pilot and the man who saves Pyllis Calvert the only stewardess from a fate worse than her own worse fate could imagine.

"Broken Journey" sits in-between "Five Came Back", 1939 and "Alive", much later at 1993. All three stories are about being lost and then saved. Two of these tales take place in mountain snows while the third is a jungle adventure. One is based on fact and the others not, but all three deal with the wilderness within the human psyche. By far, the best of the three is the first "5 Came Back" flying on a fictive high, but so much better than the frozen fakery of a "Broken Journey".

Airport '48.

[mark.waltz · 6/10 · 13 November 2023]

Actually they're only at the airport briefly, the pilots and crew of a passenger airplane (long before the jet era) is faced with near disaster, forced to land on a snowy Alps mountaintop with ten mostly temperamental passengers aboard. These oddball characters who never thought that they'd never see these people ever again have to learn to get along if they're going to survive, and that means learning how to be cooperative if they're not going to be tossed out into the freezing cold and face certain death.

Looking like the crashed plane stranded in the mountains of Tibet in "Lost Horizon", there's no Shangri La waiting to take them in. Phyllis Calvert headlines as the stewardess, still in mourning over the man she loved who died at the end of the war, romanced by co-pilot James Donald. Head pilot Guy Rolfe has to maintain order, and that's going to be difficult with a bombastic Italian opera star (a bellowing Francis L. Sullivan) and a vain movie star (Margot Grahame) whose near breakdown didn't get her the slap she needed to shut up.

While this film definitely has its intense moments (especially when a party of men heads out to find if there's civilization near by, the arguing (especially from the nasty Grahame who is really a piece of work) gets tiresome. Sullivan does surprisingly apologize for earlier tantrums over his records being broken, realizing that there's much more to be concerned about, and concerned with the others. But it's slow at times, although there are a few moments where the dangers are truly frightening ones. Definitely worth watching as the snowy set is very realistic, resulting in a very good job by photographer Jack E. Cox.

Routine plane crash drama

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 16 April 2017]

BROKEN JOURNEY is your standard plane-crash drama in which a plane goes down in the Alps, leaving everyone on board alive but stranded miles from nowhere in freezing terrain. The film posits the question as to whether it's best to await rescue or to go looking for it, and the issue is compounded by the presence of a disabled man in an iron lung on board.

This is solid enough material, quite slowly-paced and not as exciting as a more modern adaptation would be, nor as edgy as something like FLIGHT OF A PHOENIX. Still, a cast of familiar faces (including David Tomlinson, James Donald, Guy Rolfe, and Raymond Huntley) handle the material adroitly, with stiff upper lips all round, and fans of the era will probably enjoy it regardless.

A moving tale of human courage

[calvertfan · 10/10 · 19 April 2002]

A mismatched group of people (the singer, the movie star and her boyfriend, the man in the iron lung and his nurse, a refugee, etc) are passengers on a plane which makes an emergency landing on a glacier. Miles from anywhere and with the radio out, theirs is a bitter tale of survival which does not necessarily end happily ever after.

Wonderful movie, beautifully shot and with some wonderful acting by Phyllis Calvert and Sonia Holm, as well as David Tomlinson who hits on every girl he can find! An easy 10/10.

Broken Journey

[CinemaSerf · 5/10 · 5 January 2023]

A group of folks are on a plane that crash lands high in the Swiss Alps. Their radio is flat so they have to decide whether to stick it out in the (relative) safety of their aircraft or set off to find help. It's got quite a good British cast - a starring performance from Francis L. Sullivan with Guy Rolfe & Phyllis Calvert et al but the characters are all pretty unattractive and by the end I really didn't much care if they survived or not... It is also quite dialogue heavy with precious little actual action once the plane has skidded to it's lofty stop..........................................

"Take Us Away from Here!!"

[richardchatten · 8/10 · 11 September 2019]

Enjoyable retread of an archetypal situation generally traced back to 'Five Came Back' in 1939 and best known these days for 'The Flight of the Phoenix'. The British stiff upper lip isn't much in evidence as this lot squabble amongst each other on top of a mountain on which they've crashed in the Alps, which makes an interesting change. (Top-billed Phyllis Calvert also wears her hair far longer and looser in the early scenes than one is used to seeing air hostesses in the movies.)

Entertaining

[grahamlundegaard · 8/10 · 9 December 2020]

Very enjoyable and hilarious in places, although I'm not sure if that was always intentional!