Tonight's Movie: Airport (1970) - A Kino Lorber Blu-ray Review

The aviation disaster classic AIRPORT (1970) will be released this week by Kino Lorber.

The movie will be available in Blu-ray, which is the format I've reviewed, along with the 4K release. Coming out on the same date are single-title releases of the other Airport movies, AIPORT 1975 (1974), AIRPORT '77 (1977), and THE CONCORDE...AIRPORT '79 (1979).

The movies will also be available in a four-film set in late October.

Longtime readers may recall I'm a big fan of AIRPORT, which I first reviewed here in 2010; in 2014 wrote about seeing it on a big screen at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood along with AIRPORT 1975. I love the entire series.

I don't think I'd seen AIRPORT in over a decade, and it was quite a pleasure to revisit it thanks to this lovely new Blu-ray. The technical specs tell us the print is from a new HD master from a 4k scan of 35mm interpositive reduction elements and also features 5.1 Surround sound.

AIRPORT tells the story of the titular airport on a snowy night, as well as what happens to one specific flight which takes off from the airport and must later return.

In two hours and 17 minutes we meet a wide cast of characters, including Mel Bakersfeld (Burt Lancaster), the manager of the airport; Joe Patroni (George Kennedy), the mechanic charged with moving a snowbound airplane off an urgently needed runway; Tanya Livingston (Jean Seberg), an airline employee who's attracted to the married Mel; and Harry Standish (Lloyd Nolan) of airport security.

Meanwhile Mel's brother-in-law Vern (Dean Martin) is two-timing Mel's nice sister Sarah (Barbara Hale) with a decades-younger stewardess (Jacqueline Bisset) who's just announced she's expecting his baby.

Vern's plane, copiloted by Anson Harris (Barry Nelson) and Cy Jordan (Gary Collins), will run into trouble thanks to a bomb carried onboard by a disturbed man (Van Heflin, looking absolutely awful).

The scenes with Heflin, his frantic wife (Maureen Stapleton), and a way-too-twee stowaway played by Helen Hayes (who won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar) haven't held up well and are frankly fast forward-able, and it's also kind of wild that not one but both the film's leading men are cheating on their wives.

In the case of Lancaster's wife, played by Dana Wynter, it's a bit more understandable given her chilly, demanding demeanor, but it's also very sad as they have two daughters (Lisa Gerritsen and Illana Dowding).

But Martin sneaking around behind the back of lovely Barbara Hale just seems mean. At least his character shows some growth over the course of the film, but will he sustain it after movie's end?

Despite the above flaws and some very creaky dialogue -- including a few lines of the type that are "so bad they're good" -- AIRPORT sustains viewer interest for all of its fairly lengthy running time.

I especially enjoy the film's "procedural" aspects, the "ticktock" of how the airport runs and especially the pilots' interactions with very realistic-sounding air traffic controllers, who are creatively cut into the middle of the screen.

In short, I had a grand time watching it and loved the climactic excitement with Patroni struggling to move the stuck plane out of the way in time for the damaged plane to land. 

The movie, filmed in widescreen Technicolor by Ernest Laszlo, looks terrific on Kino Lorber's Blu-ray, and I'd add that Alfred Newman's booming final score sounds great as well.

The supporting cast includes Virginia Grey, Paul Picerni, Jessie Royce Landis, Mary Jackson, Larry Gates, and Whit Bissell, with a few more familiar faces tucked deep down in the credits.

The movie was written and directed by George Seaton, based on the novel by Arthur Hailey.

Kino Lorber presents AIRPORT as a Special Edition with a cardboard slipcase. The disc includes a new commentary track by Julie Kirgo and C. Courtney Joyner, along with the trailer (newly mastered in 2K) and a gallery of five additional trailers.

Incidentally, I learned from the trailer and confirmed via some Googling that Dana Wynter pronounced her first name like "Donna." I'd had no idea.

I'm looking forward to watching the rest of the movies in this series soon.

Thanks to Kino Lorber for providing a review copy of this Blu-ray.

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