Have to agree that 12 O'clock High is one of the very best. Gregory Peck was exceptional.
Although the film was made only a few years after the war the extremely atmospheric scenes at the beginning, with the Adj at the old airfield boundary, can still be replicated today. You can still go to half a hundred old USAAF and Bomber Command bases in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and stand at the end of the now crazed and failing surfaces that are, oh so slowly, losing their battle against the encroaching weeds and fauna.
However, half close your eyes; try to ignore the modern distractions, and you can still easily transform sounds of motor traffic to lorries delivering the crews to dispersals; you can still – I swear - hear the whine, splutter and roar of Cyclones and Twin Wasps coming to life; the squealing brakes as the '17s and '24s taxi out and thunder into the breaking dawn while the cold, damp, English wind sweeps the noise away into history. Let your imagination run free for a minute and you can, too, still smell the exhaust fumes and the coke fires from the Pot Bellied stoves in the Quonsett huts. The old Flying Control building suddenly looks alive and has windows with people behind them; Aldis lamps flash and a signal flare cracks and breaks the windy silence……
But it's only the lowering winter sun glinting on a shard of glass in the rusting window frame and the Farmer taking a pot-shot at a rabbit. Reality returns. But the ghostly memories remain. Turn back to the car, pat the stone memorial erected by grateful people, whisper a 'Thanks Guys' and surreptitiously place a poppy on the memorial and drive off, after removing that damn piece of grit from one's eye. Look in the mirror and be startled to see, you are sure, a young man in a leather flying-jacket waving a good-bye.
Thanks Guys
Yes, a damn good film.