Airport (1970)

There was a time when disaster movies were as much about the people being acted upon as they were about the giant special effects acting on them.

A perfect example is Airport, one of the first – and best – disaster movies ever made: Compare its 10 Oscar nominations (and one win) to, let’s say, the three technical achievement nominations that Armageddon got and you’ll understand what I‘m talking about.

The film tells the story of a poor depressed soul named D. O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) who comes up with a plan to make a better life for his family by taking out a big insurance policy and ending his own life midway through a flight from New York to Rome.

But that’s just one of the stories being told. There’s also the story of the pilot (Dean Martin) who gets the stewardess pregnant, and the story of the little old lady (Oscar winner Helen Hayes) who raises stowing away to the level of art. The Airport manager is in love with his secretary, but wants to stay loyal to his wife (who is having an affair). The pilot and the manager – who are brothers-in-law – hate each other. And George Patroni, the gruff airport mechanic (a wonderful George Kennedy), hates everybody because he got called in to fix their problems on his one night off.

Sure, it’s a soap opera, but it’s a very well written and well acted soap opera that puts humans and human emotions in the forefront instead of just being props to the big bang that comes at the end of the film. That makes it better than most of the ‘disasters’ being show in theaters today.

Starring Burt Lancaster, George Kennedy, Dean Martin and Jacqueline Bisset.

IMDB Site.