Broken Journey ** (1948, Phyllis Calvert, James Donald, Margot Grahame) – Classic Movie Review 13,448

Ken Annakin’s 1948 British disaster film Broken Journey tells the truth-based story of how passengers and crew battle to survive after their airliner crashes on top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps.

Director Ken Annakin’s 1948 British drama film Broken Journey tells the truth-based story of how passengers and crew battle to survive after their airliner crashes on top of a mountain in the Swiss Alps. It stars the ensemble cast of Phyllis Calvert, James Donald, Margot Grahame, Francis L Sullivan, Raymond Huntley, Derek Bond, Guy Rolfe, David Tomlinson, Bonar Colleano, Sonia Holm, Andrew Crawford, and Charles Victor,

The screenplay by Robert Westerby is closely based on a 1946 true-life accident in the Swiss Alps when a C-53 Skytrooper crashed on the Gauli Glacier, Switzerland, and eight passengers and four crew members were rescued.

Solid British players help along this Ken Annakin disaster movie with a familiar premise about how people react after an alpine charter-plane crashes with a passenger list of 13 assorted stereotypes aboard.

The pilot, Captain Fox (Guy Rolfe), manages to set the aircraft down on a glacier with a minimum of damage, but the can’t radio for help with run-down batteries and a storm setting in, but there is shelter in the wrecked aircraft.

The needy or demanding passengers – film star Joanna Dane (Margot Grahame), opera tenor Perami (Francis L Sullivan ) and iron lung patient John Barber (Grey Blake ) – are nobly cared for by air hostess Mary Johnstone (Phyllis Calvert), who thrusts out her stiff upper lip and puts aside her sad love story to do so. Her fiancé died on the last day of the war, and she is reluctant to admit her growing feelings for  co-pilot Bill Haverton (James Donald).

The various stories, the film’s staging and some of the support acting are none too believable and weighed down with their baggage of clichés. But some first class passengers like Francis L Sullivan, Raymond Huntley, Derek Bond, Guy Rolfe, David Tomlinson and Bonar Colleano are welcome company and just occasionally the film takes flight.

All the huge amount of work was in vain. It was a box office flop, recording a loss of £63,900, against a budget of £197,000.

Sydney Box was appointed head of production of Gainsborough Pictures studios in 1946 and commissioned Robert Westerby to write a script based on the real-life story. Box sent Annakin out to Mount Blanc to look for locations and gave him finance for an old Dakota airplane.

Annakin said the script ‘read beautifully with 12 picturesque characters who all had what seemed to be interesting gimmicks, but when I got down to filming them, I found they were cardboard characters. No matter how neatly they were dovetailed into the plot, one didn’t care for them.’

The film was shot in 14 weeks in 1947, with location filming in Switzerland and studio work at Shepherd’s Bush. London.

Release date: 14 April 1948 (London).

The cast

The cast are Phyllis Calvert as Mary Johnstone, James Donald as Bill Haverton, Margot Grahame as Joanna Dane, Francis L. Sullivan as Perami, Raymond Huntley as Edward Marshall, Derek Bond as Richard Faber, Guy Rolfe as Captain Fox, David Tomlinson as Jimmy Marshall, Sonia Holm as Anne Stephens, Grey Blake as John Barber, Sybille Binder as Lilli Romer, Andrew Crawford as Kid Cormack, Charles Victor as Harry Gunn, Gerard Heinz as Joseph Romer, Mary Hinton as Mrs Barber, Michael Allan, Stuart Linsdell, Arthur Goullet, Leo Beiber, and Ferdy Mayne.

Broken Journey is directed by Ken Annakin, runs 89 minutes, is made by Gainsborough Pictures, is released by General Film Distributors (UK) and Eagle-Lion Films (US), is written by Robert Westerby, is shot in black and white by Jack E Cox, is produced by Sydney Box, and is scored by John Greenwood

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,448

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com