Twelve O'Clock High (1949)

 Henry King's "Twelve O'Clock High"


There were plenty of stories to mine from the first World War after its end. One of them, called Black Thursday, was turned into a feature-length film. This film, "Twelve O'Clock High," directed by Henry King, stars Gregory Peck as a no-nonsense Brigadier who assumed command of an American Air Force unit with morale problems. The story is about a typical 'tough commander turning a lazy group of men into hard-working soldiers' plot. Because of this, it is easy to lose interest in the plot quickly, especially for its almost 2-and-a-half-hour runtime. However, the film was a major success and earned many Oscar nominations, winning a Best Supporting Actor for Dean Jagger. It was a very patriotic war film at a time when America was recovering from World War II.



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