Night Flight (1933)

The arduous task of flying mail across the Andes Mountains is made much more dangerous with airline director John Barrymore’s determination to have his night delivery program succeed. Putting real stakes in the delivery is a sick child in Rio de Janeiro desperately needing a polio serum from Buenos Aires. A star-studded affair that includes Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, Lionel Barrymore, and Myrna Loy, these heavy stakes are oddly only discussed as bookends at the beginning and end while the rest of the film rests on conflict at the airline and the personal lives of its pilots. I have an affinity for postal films and this one certainly has gorgeous vistas and a lovely South America map showing the connections that must be made, but I wish it had an added runtime to really flesh out each of the star characters and the importance of the activity at hand.