New Picture

Target for Tonight (Crown Film Unit; Warner) could never have been made in Hollywood. It is too real. It had to be made exactly where it was: on the flying fields of England, over the grim, green, greasy waters of the Channel; high in the Flak-lit night over Germany.

Target is a full, authentic, minute record of an R.A.F. bombing raid on Germany--from the telltale packet of negatives parachuted to English earth by a reconnaissance plane to the last homing bomber groaning down onto the flare-lit runway in the dirty dawn. Its actors are those happy few to whom Britain and the democracies owe so much: the members of the R.A.F. There is not a ham in the cast.

This exquisite documentary film, restrained, intelligent, free from feeble flag-waving and dramatic pretense, is eloquent with superb photography and suspense. It is far & away the best picture that has come out of World War II.

The target of the title is a newly sprung-up clump of naval stores (oil, barges, etc.) spied out by reconnaissance craft at Frei-hausen, Germany. The camera follows the raid preparations: selection of the target by the Chief of the Bomber Command in his great hall papered with maps, cluttered with ceiling-high ladders, scale rulers, calipers, telephones; designation of one experienced squadron to make a low-level attack; instruction of the chosen crews at Millerton Airfield by the Wing Commander; arming, gassing and readying the bombers; and, when night comes, the takeoff.

The departure of the full-bellied Wellingtons is a high point of suspense. The Wing Commander stands in a trailer hauled onto the flying field. From its roof projects a small glass dome. The Wing, equipped with headphones and mouthpiece, peers through the glass, dispatching his squadron: "Hello, C for Charlie [name of the plane ]. You may taxi up and take off." C for Charlie trundles with a roar into the night. Then: "Hello, control. C for Charlie airborne 19:35 [7:35 p.m.]." On the raid, camera and sound track accompany a plane called F for Freddie and its crew of six. Theirs is an ominous journey--through cotton-wool clouds, across rivers like threads of dirty tinsel, above the grey, night-hung earth. The pilot-captain talks with his crew over the intercommunicating phone. To his Scottish navigator: "Hey, Mac, where are we now, as if you'd know?" Mac, indignantly: "I ken fine where we are. We're approaching Karlsruhe--famous for its breweries, you know." "O.K., let's go down and smell its breath." Over the target the mood changes. Flak (antiaircraft) and tracers zoom upward in great, searing arcs, phosphorescent balls of fire in the black night. Starting slowly, they pick up tremendous speed, whoof past the bomber like heaven-bent rockets.

The plane goes into a steep dive and Mac, his eye to the bombsight, takes command: "Right a bit. Left a bit. Steady at that!" Four bombs are short, but the fifth, a 1,000-pounder, whangs the target with an explosion that drowns the plane in white light. Twisting and turning to get out of the searchlights, F for Freddie heads for the Channel and home.

Target's cast is unlisted, but some are recognizable, others known: Air Marshal Sir Richard Peirse, Commander in Chief of the R.A.F. Bomber Command; "Speedy" Powell, the blond, curly-topped Wing Commander (O.B.E., D.S.O.), who led the first over-the-Alps raid on Venice; the rugged Group-Captain (D.S.O., D.F.C. and Bar), a famed pilot, now grounded, who led the first raid on Sylt. The crew of F for Freddie, which devoted three months to making the film, have made more than 200 flights over Germany.

But the hit of the picture is Flight Sergeant MacPherson. the shock-haired, strong-nosed little Scotsman, one of the R.A.F. 's best navigators. His importance to the picture is twofold. He represents the unheadlined heroes of the air, the gunners, bombardiers, radio operators, grease-monkeys, whose functions appear for the first time in Target in their true perspective: fully as exciting and significant as the pilots'.

Most poignant sequence: the Crew Room--it might be any American college locker room before the big game--after the bomber crews have dressed and gone.

The echo of their nervous bantering still hangs in the room as the camera lingers a long moment on the sudden emptiness. The players have gone; the game has started.

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