Strategic Air Command (1955)

I don't understand Anthony Mann's career. He made several really excellent films, numerous good westerns, a couple of giant, bloated epics like The Fall of the Roman Empire and Le Cid, and he also made a bunch of garbage with Jimmy Stewart in the 1950s. What was he doing? 

Strategic Air Command is almost not a movie at all. It's a two-hour-long commercial for the Air Force. It's trying to get young men to join the Air Force, and it's trying to justify the U.S. government's funding of the Air Force. I don't know if this worked in 1955, but it didn't work for me.

In this film, there is no war. It's a film about the Air Force that doesn't involve shooting at anything. Talk about low stakes! This thing is really baffling.

June Allyson is pleasant, but Jimmy Stewart in the 1950s really and truly was not for me. This sort of grandfatherly character he plays in these movies just baffles me. He really wasn't so old when this came out – 48 or so – but he looks a great deal older for some reason, and the idea that he's supposed to be a baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals just seems preposterous.

Also, synopses of this film say things like baseball and the air force meet in this film. No. This film doesn't have anything to do with baseball. As I say, it's a long, drawn-out commercial for the air force, complete with unnecessary marching music when, like, random planes take off to go nowhere.