Man on a Bus is a Joseph H. Lewis movie I thought I'd never see but thanks to some Spielberg money that preserved it, here we are. The half hour short seems to have been intended for television stations to air around Rosh Hashanah, back when they did that sort of thing, and was sponsored by the United Jewish Appeal.
Passengers are on a bus that breaks down in the Negev desert, offering a chance for them to tell how they all came to Israel. Coming just 10 years after the war most of the stories are pretty grisly and there's a lot of stock footage mixed throughout to backup both the bad and the good. It stars some A- list stars including Broderick Crawford as the bus driver and passengers include Ruth Roman, J. Carrol Naish, and Walter Brennan(!). The tales are briskly told given the time constraints but the film does manage to convey the thanks, wonder, courage, fear, and foreboding of the new settlers as they wait to be either attacked or rescued.
Lewis isn't given a lot to work with but you can tell he's there, the staged portions are quite well done and there is a certain visual style you normally wouldn't see in PSA level productions. Naturally there is a theme of the need to donate to the charities that were helping the new settlers and country but it isn't too obnoxious for viewers today. Probably mainly for Lewis aficionados or Walter Brennan completists though.
Passengers are on a bus that breaks down in the Negev desert, offering a chance for them to tell how they all came to Israel. Coming just 10 years after the war most of the stories are pretty grisly and there's a lot of stock footage mixed throughout to backup both the bad and the good. It stars some A- list stars including Broderick Crawford as the bus driver and passengers include Ruth Roman, J. Carrol Naish, and Walter Brennan(!). The tales are briskly told given the time constraints but the film does manage to convey the thanks, wonder, courage, fear, and foreboding of the new settlers as they wait to be either attacked or rescued.
Lewis isn't given a lot to work with but you can tell he's there, the staged portions are quite well done and there is a certain visual style you normally wouldn't see in PSA level productions. Naturally there is a theme of the need to donate to the charities that were helping the new settlers and country but it isn't too obnoxious for viewers today. Probably mainly for Lewis aficionados or Walter Brennan completists though.
