Fighter Wing
1956 · 30m · Canada
Directed by Don Haldane
Genres: documentary, war
Tones: contemplative
Canadian airmen of Green Section drill and fly from Zweibrücken, West Germany, while explaining what fighter-pilot life demands. Fred Davis introduces the squadron's routines for the Perspective series.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1956 NFB squadron doc that plays it completely straight—no irony, no subversion, just airmen explaining duty with the kind of earnest formality that's almost radical in its refusal to wink at the camera. It's so committed to its own bureaucratic sincerity that it loops back into something genuinely strange.
Haldane's *Perspective* entry is a masterclass in institutional documentary form—precise editing between flight sequences and testimonialist interviews that situates itself squarely in the NFB's postwar documentary lineage, with particular attention to how routine and discipline can become visual poetry through measured pacing.
The quiet choice here is letting the pilots' voices remain contemplative rather than heroic; Davis doesn't punch up the narration, doesn't manipulate the footage—he trusts that the specific texture of how these men describe their daily pressure points will carry the entire film.