Rent No Highway in the Sky (1951)

Disaster thriller. - No Highway in the Sky review by Steve

This stands apart from most suspense thrillers because it draws quite realistically on scientific theory. The author of the 1948 source novel, was Nevil Shute, who had previously been an aeronautical engineer, and the hazard of metal fatigue to aircraft safety would result in a real life tragedy a few years later.

James Stewart plays a research scientist concerned about the sustainability of the aluminium frames of a new line of commercial aircraft. He predicts the tails will fall off after 1440 flight hours. And then it happens. While traveling to Canada to examine the crash debris, he discovers the plane he has boarded is approaching the crucial time span...

So for all the boffinry, this settles down into a disaster film. Stewart is a complex character; autistic, a widower, and a loner. But essentially a loose screw on a commercial flight which he claims is about to fall out of the sky. Meanwhile head office insist there's nothing to see, fearful of the bottom line.

Among the fellow flyers, Marlene Dietrich packs some incidental glamour, but Glynis Johns' flat performance is a negative. Stewart is solid as a shy, unheroic man made eccentric by his extreme intelligence, and suffering from his own stress fatigue. While there's a thoughtful production, its best factor is Shute's exciting plot premise.