Evening star., 1945-02-14

upon the civilian population in this
war, this follower of the motion pic
ture has missed it. Between those
passages dealing with the havoc
wrought, and the victories won on
such an overwhelming scale. one is
permitted backStage-on the ilight
deck and in the entrals of the car
rier-to meet the individuals who
provide the terrific drama of the
battle shots.
1t not only deepens ones admira-
ton for the Navy, and the magni-
ficent job it has done, but vastly in
creaSeS the affection in which it
must be held as an instrument of
freedom.
X X y X
There have been numerous, and
superb, aviation pictures in the
course of the war. Those earlier
ones, however, have merely served
to emphasize what perfect stage
the airplane carrier makes for the
setting of an aviation story. It is
neither too vast to frustrate COM
prehension. nor so small as to mini
mize the striking force of the wars
most devastating single weapon.
The whole story Is there in COM
pletely understandable terms, the
excitement of devastating attack
from the carriers flight deck to the
even greater tingling thrills of the
defense when the maddened Japs
close in for the attempted but un-
achieved kill.
One never learns to love one of
these fighting ladies until she has
been hurt" Narrator Robert Taylor
says in one of the most dramatic
lines of the narration, and one of
the most believable. Until then,
one is awed, impressed and amazed,
three splendid emotional reactions
to the over all drama of this film.
1t is no less than a masterpiece
of editing that Producer de Roche
mont has done on the enormous
footages of Navy film placed at his
disposal. Patiently the battle shots
are the most exciting, those of the
attack - seemingly endless - upon
the Japanese Navy in its refuge at
Truk and in the Marianas But
the fashion in which they have
been counterpointed with shots of
life aboard the carrier, in the ready
rooms where the pilots wait, in the
intelligence centers where enemy
action is recorded and digested, in
the enginerooms where white hot
boilers provide the mobility of the
floating airdrome, and in the laun-
dry where the battle togs are
cleaned and repaired,
x
Fighting photography has never
surpassed the thrill that is to be
found in numerous sequences in
The Fighting Lady" To select any
one sequence as the most dramatic
in the film is to be arbitrary, but
it could validly be that in which
Japanese torpedo plane is shown
bearing in at deck level through
a torrent of defensive fire until it
almost reaches it's target and
plunges. in flames, into the sea. THE
Lady," never identified but
one of the latest and most powerful
of carriers, seems doomed at that
moment and it could easily be the
most exciting moment the camera
has captured during the war
There are many logically COM
petitive passages among the battle
sequences. One literally climbs into
the cockpits of the fighter planes
and rides them down on their straf-
ing missions on japanese installa-
tions. One does the same in the
snarling dives of the small bombing
planes, and in the slower, more de-
structive ones of the torpedo bomb
ers which hurl their projectiles into
the hulls of enemy surface craft.
Taylor. Junior grade lieutenant
in the Navy, does an altogether sat-