I’ve never seen any of this film before, but I watched this entire clip and it was riveting. The production value and realism are astounding, especially considering the age of the film. WOW!
I find more often than not these days my suspension of disbelief is better broke by older movies which a lot of younger people would say had “cheesy effects“ by today. But I still like them more, like in the old 20,000 leagues under the sea.
@@maximilianavdeev7363 I'm with you on that. I can understand how slightly dated some of the effects are because of the limitations of their time, and if they managed to pull it off in a way that still holds up to this day I have even greater praise. Nowadays with the technology we have and how massive of a budget big hollywood movies are you'd expect more out of them than what they actually put out, which unfortunately is most commonly an over-the-top mess that defies logic
One can tell that Hughes was an aviation and technology man. The movie's depiction of the sound detector equipment on the ground just as the Zeppelin's entire command bridge are absolutely spot on and fit historical photos. Seems he insisted on thorough research for those sets.
Truly incredible achievement for it's time. The zeppelin emerges from the clouds like a demon from hell. No detail is lost to build the scene. The POV of the aircraft diving right down onto the zeppelin made me gasp. The final conflagration of wreckage is an enormous miniature, really, really enormous, maybe as big as a house. What a production!
Carl von Haartman plays the german commander of the zeppelin. He was a finnish actor, director, aviator and soldier. He fought in the spanish civil war, the finnish winter war, continuation war in Finland and the war of Lappland during WW2. He was of noble birth. He was even in the Hollywood movie Wings from 1927 directed by William Wellman as an actor and aviator advisor. He made movies in Finland in the 30:s and died in Spain in 1980.
That's true, Sam.Carl con Haartman was my grandfather. He was not only actor, director and military (Colonel in the Finnish and in the Spanish Army) but also a businessman, farmer, etc. He had an incredible personality. Thank you so much, Sam.
Circa 1970s in Los Angeles Ca. It was exciting to see the Goodyear blimp go by a night. The sides would light up with advertisements. The almost silent drone of the motors. My grandfather told us that in his youth those where weapons of war and the searchlights that we only knew as an announcement to some grand opening where used to find the blimp to shoot them down. We still had the air sirens blare out one Friday a month at 10am. I asked what if the enemy is crafty enough to attack on the 3rd Friday at 10am and everyone ignored it? Pops pointed at our radio and said all the radio and tv stations would sound the alarm. Somehow that made me feel better.
My father, born in 1916, recalled being horrified by that scene of the jumping German soldiers when he saw that film in the 1930s. 60 years old myself, I’ve only recently found this scene he was talking about from my fuzzy memory 😵
It hgaunts me still... OMG Fuck Kaiser and country you know what would make it even LIGHTER?! Removing the parachutes, too. Unless some dipshit already dropped them out I haven't seen the whole movie
It's still disturbing. It really nailed the Fanatizm of the Germans when it comes to war. This movie was in 1916 sonic was even before WWII. It was even 2 years before WWI so it shows people could see War coming. If you get an opportunity to watch the full movie..its worth it, there were so many 1st it created and much of how we do movies now are owed to it. One small story was Hollywood didn't want Howard to make the movie so bad they wouldn't loan him cameras...so he went and Purchased EVER MOTION PICTURE CAMERA AVAILABLE and put them in real BiPlanes..he had the world's largest Air Force with all the Cameras he could put in them and held them on ground for months at a time waiting for good weather so dogfighting scenes filmed would have proper lighting and vision.. the money he spent on this was Elon Musk level cash. It was the first Blockbuster.
@JZ's Best Friend I disagree, I thought most of all filmmakers who studied art and film making academically, who've been into the art form from the early age, etc. (bar opportunistic industrial puppet, such J.J. Abrams, Michael Bay) They usually have an intimacy and a deep interest on the state of the art itself, thus exploring the art matter would be inevitable. The problem is, the production house, e.g. Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, they're the one who's always playing safe, because the interest is different. They seek for profit, the movie itself is irrelevant. When a filmmaker faced them, their creativity became confined, and formularized upon the studio's demand, upon the market's demand. This is why the rise of such formularized films/franchises i.e. disney, is being criticized by Scorcese as being formulaic and as such marginalized films qua films, as for example this. This marginalization, Scorcese afraid, will not just be marginalized but totally deprived from theatres since it wouldn't be financially viable. But, for now, we have A24 and Neon, which-yes-doesn't solve the issue whatsoever, but for the very least, both filmmakers and us: the consumers, have an option to choose in engaging the state of film making which we dearly love.
If anyone's not seen this entire movie, it's excellent and well worth watching. Believe what you like about Howard Hughes but within him was true genius.
Absolutely amazing camera angles and set design. If you didn't realize the very real 20th technology behind the zeppelins, you would swear you were watching a Fritz Lang science fiction film. No wonder Wings was the world's first Academy Award film. Awesome and epic in scope.
So real, complete with accurate fire, physical dynamics, and structural failures. They couldn't have used the Hindenburg for reference because the disaster happened 7 years after this movie debuted. Truly ahead of their time.
In the conflagration at the end, I thought he could have used colorized film from the Hindenburg going down. But apparently not without a time machine.
My grandmother cycled to Billericay here in the UK where L32 had been shot down. My brother still has part of it that she picked up. One of the crew had jumped rather than burn. His femurs had been driven up into his chest and she said it was a terrible sight as a 15 year old to bare witness to even though he was the enemy
The scene before this as I recall involved Jean Harlo in a very suggestive pre code situation. It then cut to the zep emerging through the clouds. The nature of this was not lost on a college audience and evoked some considerable boisterous reaction.
For the making of this movie, Hughes had one of the largest air forces in the world. Don't you just love the captain, complete with the scar on his cheek? The observer was one brave man! He did not even have a parachute.
This is fantastic! I had no idea this even existed....The model work for it's day is fantastic...as well as the special effects....the whole making the crew jump to go faster is ridiculous, but chilling all the same. I have read quite a bit about the Zeppelin raids in WWI and some of the equipment and the lowering of the gondola to observe below the clouds is very accurate. I am going to see if I can find the rest of the movie.
I was watching The Aviator and popped over to check this out for a few minutes because it was in the movie. Just wanted to get the feel of it. Stayed for the whole thing. 😂
It's melodramatic, the dialogue was added to the scenes later on... but it looks and sounds incredible and I'm so glad they couldn't/didn't add a musical score.
Marvellous! I’ve always wanted to see this, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to see any of it. Good old Howard Hughes, the best excuse for inherited wealth since Paris Hilton! lol
Film acting was still new, and most of these actors came from stage acting, where broad gesture was encouraged, and silent films, where such was the only way to really communicate.
Hypocondriac whoremonger ,like any bourgois american multimillionaire ,but most of all,a very bold and clever man.Flying today is really safer because of him.
The actual flying sequences, both real and model, are still brilliant. (The Zep itself was, so I understand, a very large model) To pick up odd threads - Warneford VC destroyed a Zep by bombing it with a Morane Saulnier but, as you say, willful sacrifice never happened. Similarly the only times German crews jumped from a Zep were when it was already going down in flames - the late Peter Strasser, the Zeppelin commander par excellence died over Essex in this way. (One man fell from Warneford's Zep, crashed through a convent roof into a nun's bed and lived to tell the tale, apparently!) The jettisoning of the observation car was allegedly inspired by one being found after a Zep had been downed, but which had most likely become detached in the final fall. The film is great for genuine WW1 aircraft appearing in flight - pity about the rubbish script which is Hollywood tosh at its worst, Jean Harlow and the womanising! Just watch it for the aircraft - they're the true stars!
Also, no Zeppelins were ever actually downed by a ramming Allied aircraft. To make matters worse, people actually believe the repeat of this scene in the later movie "Fly Boys", and worse still, that the Zeppelin could actually explode like a half-empty gas tank. One was literally bombed out of the air, though, by a Sopwith Tabloid whose original mission was to bomb a Zeppelin shed facility. When the air ship captain panicked and decided to lose altitude to accommodate his VIP passengers, the British pilot managed to gain enough altitude too fly over the Zeppelin with a target for his bomb load over the sir-ship nearly as big as an air-field. The single survivor was the air-ship's pilot who fell free and landed on a dormitory bed after breaking through the ceiling.
The Hindenburg film shows how rapidly an airship could catch fire though, and a ramming would or could do significant damage to the relatively fragile internal structure. Were no ramming attacks ever attempted? They would clearly be suicidal so not surprising if none ever were.
@@Whitpusmc Actually, they were very difficult to set fire to, and did not burn that quickly. Of the 97 people aboard Hindenburg, 62 survived and only 35 died, because they had the time to get off even while the ship was burning. The British found that out early in the war when they would try to shoot them down over their homeland with regular ammunition. The result of their experiences was the development of two specialized bullets that were mixed in their machine-gun belts for their home defense aircraft. One was an explosive bullet, with a hollow tip filled with nitroglycerine that was to be impacted by a small steel ball located in the back of the bullet that was thrust forward upon impact with a structural girder part of the airship. Following that was an incendiary bullet that would ignite any leaking gas caused by the structural damage tearing the gas cells. Still, at that, it was a "slow burn", as depicted in the Howard Hughes movie, not the exploding gas can as depicted in "Fly Boys".
Tom T Many thanks for that reply! My favorite world war one pilot was Willie Coppens and he did have success shooting down balloons used for artillery spotting so I assumed the Zepplin’s were more flammable then they were thanks again For the education.
@@Whitpusmc None that were recorded. For a trained night fighter pilot to want to do a suicidal ramming attack over the U.K. would mean losing the best assignment he could get as an RAF pilot during WW 1. Being on his home soil within reach of his friends and family when on leave, as well as being billeted in decent housing, instead of borrowed make-do facilities on the Western Front, etc.
Tom T Not to mention dying a fiery death falling from 15,000 feet? Even Willy Coppens said “Of course I had to bring the airplane back, I needed it to bring me home...”
This is groundbreaking cinema for 1930. Most of us only know this picture from the few excerpts referenced in The Aviator. Film was still very linear in 1930. The dialogue was often indicative and stilted and 99% of American films lacked the organic quality that would come later with Best Years of Our Lives, Grapes of Wrath, Sunset Boulevard & On the Waterfront. Most cinema in 1930 was either palatial song n dance or we, the audience, are watching a play on celluloid. Hughes saw through that crap. And this is when he did. The filters? The angles? The chase planes? C’mon. Pulp Fiction of its decade 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
You lost me at comparing it as the "pulp fiction of its decade". Of everything made in the first half of the nineties, that is your pick for best (most groundbreaking) movie???
I'd heard about the film "Hell's Angels" before, but never seen it. That excerpt was truly nail biting and amazing for the time it was filmed. Now I want to see the whole thing.
I would like to experience a zeppelin voyage like an ocean liner in the sky. Problem with helium becoming more rare everyday due to helium escaping earth amosphere.
Not only technically impressive, but actually quite haunting in principle, as both sides willingly and even eagerly sacrifice their lives (the poor Germans doing so in vain). It still would have been much better without the stupid voiceovers and exaggerated makeup and facial expressions on the actors (the film industry was clearly having a rough time transitioning from silence to sound).
...the style of acting was transitioning from stage acting, evolving into film acting... ...many films from this era where considered "Photo-plays"... ...a good example of this would be the 1950 film "Cyrano DeBergerac" starring José Ferrer... ...the acting in this film has broad gestures and facial expressions typical of stage acting, yet in some instances the acting is more tailored to the closer framing of a scene being captured on film... ...by this time, at the end of the Photo-play era, they were getting the hang of acting in front of a camera, and the more subtle expressions and gestures of the conversational distances involved in framing a shot at this time...
That was actually pretty good... not accurate but still... entertaining. I love it when their stroking their mustaches in the beginning. So stereotypical. XD
Antwerp had a few zeppelin attacks during the Great War, did quite some destruction. Later the first sky scraper in Europe was built there on that spot.
*It's been a dream of mine that if I had the wealth I would resurrect the great airships of the past with all new materials and offer 'The trip of lifetime!' cruising majestically over every continent at low altitudes over Africa and South America at only 500 to 200ft. so passengers could see EVERYTHING just below them with all but inaudible engines at 'cruise-power' so everything can be heard as well and designated 'landing-zones' for excursions for some hours in areas that would be almost impossible to reach without a walking safari in very poor terrain and insects beyond count* _____________ *To almost silently glide THRU the 'Grand Canyon' at 'maintain headway speed' and see it the way the predator birds see everything...wouldn't that be something to remember!* _____________ *To cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Arctic as well where even small fish and whales would be visible from only a 100ft. above and the stars at night far from smog and light sources* _____________ *I think people would pay a 'Kings Ransom' for an adventure like that...and of course lesser amounts for a 'voyage across the U.S. from coast-to-coast' or Canada and even the Arctic regions or 'day trips' for the West and East Coasts*
@@hankjones7829 *Me too!* *The great German 'Air Ships' like the 'Hindenburg' were considered 'The Ultimate Travel Experience' in their time, and had it not been for America's refusal to sell Helium to Germany the 'Hindenburg' would have been very safe...passengers considered it a rare privilege to enjoy passage on such a majestic 'Island in the Sky' and crews were fiercely loyal...to say to anyone who asked "What sort of work do you do?" and announce "I am a rigger aboard the airship 'Hindenburg!" commanded respect and envy, as only the 'best of the best' were allowed as crewman* ( *Every man needed to be able to handle any function aboard the ship from engines to airframe at any time in case of illness...they were not just 'deck monkeys' or 'wire tighteners'* )
this looks like a movie made in the 60s or 70s!!! it does NOT look like a 1930s movie!!! . never seen it before.... but heard of it (and Hughes, of course) . idk... might have to buy this one!!
You know the Nazi party was battling for rights to become a legitimate contender in Germany at this time, imagine them watching this and thinking, "we will show them", this movie after 90 years is incredible , how many wars and such advancing human technology in history since then is amazing.
was the fire on the crash originally in color? I know there was some color in the original film, but I don't remember this scene being one of the color scenes.
I saw this when I was a little kid in the late 70s and it was all black and white. The bluish tint was added later, this seems to be kinda common with really old films. They did the same with Nosferatu
It was called a Cloud Car. It was good to be in if you were a smoker as smoking was banned on hydrogen filled airships but OK if you went out in the Cloud Car.
Theres howard hughes in blue suede shoes, smiling at the Majorettes smoking winston cigarettes. And as the song and dance begins, the children play at home With needles; needles and pins. ~Genesis song: ''Broadway Melody Of 1974" album: ''The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway''
Thanks UA-cam for this masterpiece. However. Very interesting that the demonization of germans already was in full speed at 1930. 3 years before the NatSoc rule started at all.
People tend to dehumanize their enemies in war regardless of similarities or differences. Interestingly, the Germans didn't even start World War I. The Russians backed the Serbian nationalists who assassinated the heir to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, because they wanted a Slavic ally in the region to increase their own power. France had a mutual defense treaty with Russia, so the French joined on the side of the Russians against Austria. The Prussians never needed an excuse to fight, but in this case they definitely did not throw the first punch.
You should see the demonisation of Germans in British story papers from the early part of WW1, it's insane. The bomb-aimer deliberately missing was quite the opposite.
Germany first used unrestricted submarine warfare. Germany first used poson gas. Germany first used aerial bombing of cities. Germany bombarded east coast English towns and cities, not bothered where the shells landed. /
The attention to detail - whether realistic or not - is incredible! I also liked it that the German crew spoke German, not e.g. accented English.
I think it's dubbed actually, as it was oroginally shot as a silent.
I’ve never seen any of this film before, but I watched this entire clip and it was riveting. The production value and realism are astounding, especially considering the age of the film. WOW!
The movie is boring except for a few battle scenes which have excellent special effects.
Was done twice. They redid it after sound movies were coming out.
Wow those live action and practical effects still hold up over many many years I am very impressed. It’s a good movie
I find more often than not these days my suspension of disbelief is better broke by older movies which a lot of younger people would say had “cheesy effects“ by today. But I still like them more, like in the old 20,000 leagues under the sea.
@@maximilianavdeev7363 I'm with you on that. I can understand how slightly dated some of the effects are because of the limitations of their time, and if they managed to pull it off in a way that still holds up to this day I have even greater praise.
Nowadays with the technology we have and how massive of a budget big hollywood movies are you'd expect more out of them than what they actually put out, which unfortunately is most commonly an over-the-top mess that defies logic
@@maximilianavdeev7363 Totally agree.
I'm off to look for old episodes of Flash Gordon now!
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One can tell that Hughes was an aviation and technology man. The movie's depiction of the sound detector equipment on the ground just as the Zeppelin's entire command bridge are absolutely spot on and fit historical photos. Seems he insisted on thorough research for those sets.
How true! Right up to the point that Hughes went insane, anyway.
@@v.skeggjoar7307 Maybe that's the price of striving for perfection 😆
Truly incredible achievement for it's time. The zeppelin emerges from the clouds like a demon from hell. No detail is lost to build the scene. The POV of the aircraft diving right down onto the zeppelin made me gasp. The final conflagration of wreckage is an enormous miniature, really, really enormous, maybe as big as a house.
What a production!
It was an eerie prediction of the Hindenburg disaster.
Carl von Haartman plays the german commander of the zeppelin. He was a finnish actor, director, aviator and soldier. He fought in the spanish civil war, the finnish winter war, continuation war in Finland and the war of Lappland during WW2. He was of noble birth. He was even in the Hollywood movie Wings from 1927 directed by William Wellman as an actor and aviator advisor. He made movies in Finland in the 30:s and died in Spain in 1980.
Andrew Heller Thank you for the correction. Not so good to write in english.
What is it with Hartman names, Erich was the best German ace of all time, spelled Hartmann though
That's true, Sam.Carl con Haartman was my grandfather. He was not only actor, director and military (Colonel in the Finnish and in the Spanish Army) but also a businessman, farmer, etc. He had an incredible personality. Thank you so much, Sam.
Wow, his experience in real combat does show in the film.
wooooo, the man was a extremely lucky bastard, wow, what a incredible life that he have, thanks for the info ;)
There's something Haunting about the Zeppelin cruising through the clouds at night. Well made for it's time.
Like a monster of doom approaching!
That crazy hypocondriac burgois knew how to do things.
And 30yrs later the haunting image of the zeppelin in the clouds became aV2 rocket terror never stops evolving ☠️
They should have just shot flares at it :(
Circa 1970s in Los Angeles Ca. It was exciting to see the Goodyear blimp go by a night. The sides would light up with advertisements. The almost silent drone of the motors.
My grandfather told us that in his youth those where weapons of war and the searchlights that we only knew as an announcement to some grand opening where used to find the blimp to shoot them down.
We still had the air sirens blare out one Friday a month at 10am. I asked what if the enemy is crafty enough to attack on the 3rd Friday at 10am and everyone ignored it? Pops pointed at our radio and said all the radio and tv stations would sound the alarm. Somehow that made me feel better.
My father, born in 1916, recalled being horrified by that scene of the jumping German soldiers when he saw that film in the 1930s. 60 years old myself, I’ve only recently found this scene he was talking about from my fuzzy memory 😵
It hgaunts me still... OMG Fuck Kaiser and country you know what would make it even LIGHTER?! Removing the parachutes, too. Unless some dipshit already dropped them out I haven't seen the whole movie
It's still disturbing. It really nailed the Fanatizm of the Germans when it comes to war. This movie was in 1916 sonic was even before WWII. It was even 2 years before WWI so it shows people could see War coming. If you get an opportunity to watch the full movie..its worth it, there were so many 1st it created and much of how we do movies now are owed to it.
One small story was Hollywood didn't want Howard to make the movie so bad they wouldn't loan him cameras...so he went and Purchased EVER MOTION PICTURE CAMERA AVAILABLE and put them in real BiPlanes..he had the world's largest Air Force with all the Cameras he could put in them and held them on ground for months at a time waiting for good weather so dogfighting scenes filmed would have proper lighting and vision.. the money he spent on this was Elon Musk level cash. It was the first Blockbuster.
@@markusdaxamouli5196 this movie was made in 1930.
@@markusdaxamouli5196 and WWI started in 1914, but i appreciate your passion.
The scene, as you can imagine, is a fake. It never happened that the crew of a Zeppelin did volunteer to jump out.
This movie was decades ahead of its time.
@JZ's Best Friend I disagree, I thought most of all filmmakers who studied art and film making academically, who've been into the art form from the early age, etc. (bar opportunistic industrial puppet, such J.J. Abrams, Michael Bay) They usually have an intimacy and a deep interest on the state of the art itself, thus exploring the art matter would be inevitable. The problem is, the production house, e.g. Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, they're the one who's always playing safe, because the interest is different. They seek for profit, the movie itself is irrelevant. When a filmmaker faced them, their creativity became confined, and formularized upon the studio's demand, upon the market's demand. This is why the rise of such formularized films/franchises i.e. disney, is being criticized by Scorcese as being formulaic and as such marginalized films qua films, as for example this. This marginalization, Scorcese afraid, will not just be marginalized but totally deprived from theatres since it wouldn't be financially viable. But, for now, we have A24 and Neon, which-yes-doesn't solve the issue whatsoever, but for the very least, both filmmakers and us: the consumers, have an option to choose in engaging the state of film making which we dearly love.
If anyone's not seen this entire movie, it's excellent and well worth watching. Believe what you like about Howard Hughes but within him was true genius.
Made possible by an oil drilling bit and the only heir to a fortune.
The war in expressionism style. Wonderful movie. Thanks for sharing.
Hughes was definitely a stickler for details. Great content without computer graphics.
Something to be said for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Well, that was pretty more intense that I was expecting for a movie this age. Thanks for sharing.
Absolutely amazing camera angles and set design. If you didn't realize the very real 20th technology behind the zeppelins, you would swear you were watching a Fritz Lang science fiction film. No wonder Wings was the world's first Academy Award film. Awesome and epic in scope.
Except that Wings was not a Howard Hughes film
@@ronaldfazekas6492 Who said it was? Your thinking of Hell's Angels.
Must of been awesome to have seen this in the theaters! Superb for its time and still a wonder to watch today.
Legendary scene as the Zepp emerges from the clouds.
One of my fav movies.
Those giant Mercedes diesels could be heard for miles! This was the star destroyer sequence of its time...absolutely superb!
Maybach IV 😉
This was Amazing to watch now...cannot imagine watching it at the time..this movie broke so much ground, and only Howard Hughes could have made it.
So real, complete with accurate fire, physical dynamics, and structural failures. They couldn't have used the Hindenburg for reference because the disaster happened 7 years after this movie debuted. Truly ahead of their time.
This is true, however they had many accounts of how other Zeppelins went down during the war.
In the conflagration at the end, I thought he could have used colorized film from the Hindenburg going down. But apparently not without a time machine.
Well that was gripping!
Better than many contemporary films I've watched.
Thanks for posting! 👍
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My grandmother cycled to Billericay here in the UK where L32 had been shot down.
My brother still has part of it that she picked up.
One of the crew had jumped rather than burn.
His femurs had been driven up into his chest and she said it was a terrible sight as a 15 year old to bare witness to even though he was the enemy
12:49 cutting a cable like that..so much tension.. the whip effect on the cut ends would have been dramatic and deadly
1931,91yrs ago, powerful stuff!!
Oh, the humanity!
Damn, you beat me to it! 😂
@@robashton8606 Wont somebody think of the Children!!!
That movie truly was an icon no expenses spared
Moral of the story:
No good deed goes unpunished.
20:37 is an incredible piece of footage of the zeppelin going down
I thought they stole the first from the Hindenburg disaster then I realised the movie was released 7 years before the disaster. Truly amazing.
wow 👏 Incredible ! The 1930s technology of filming was so advanced!
The scene before this as I recall involved Jean Harlo in a very suggestive pre code situation. It then cut to the zep emerging through the clouds. The nature of this was not lost on a college audience and evoked some considerable boisterous reaction.
As soon as they had to lighten the Zeppelin my heart began racing knowing it was going to come down to the crew to jump.
For the making of this movie, Hughes had one of the largest air forces in the world. Don't you just love the captain, complete with the scar on his cheek? The observer was one brave man! He did not even have a parachute.
This is fantastic! I had no idea this even existed....The model work for it's day is fantastic...as well as the special effects....the whole making the crew jump to go faster is ridiculous, but chilling all the same. I have read quite a bit about the Zeppelin raids in WWI and some of the equipment and the lowering of the gondola to observe below the clouds is very accurate. I am going to see if I can find the rest of the movie.
They are not jumping to go faster. But to go higher. It wasn't till later in the war that airplanes could go as high as a Zeppelin.
That is incredible filmmaking!
I was watching The Aviator and popped over to check this out for a few minutes because it was in the movie. Just wanted to get the feel of it. Stayed for the whole thing. 😂
Definitely one of my top ten world war one movies.
"we don't all have to go, I'm tired"
Smart man!
It's melodramatic, the dialogue was added to the scenes later on... but it looks and sounds incredible and I'm so glad they couldn't/didn't add a musical score.
Actually was shot as silent, then redone with sound. Hughes spent a million bucks on this film
You are so right about it being better without music, it's still manages to be tense and dramatic.
When production on the film wrapped, Howard Hughes owned the world's largest film archive of veteran dogfighters dogfighting. A great American.
This is the most incredible film of its time.
As in "lacking in credibility"?
Yes, quite.
To the audiences of the day, these special effects had to be amazing.
That opening sequence of the Zeppelin emerging from the clouds makes, WOW! I wonder if that inspired the opening sequence of Das Boot.
Had Karl survived his mission, he would've been sentenced to a court-martial for intentionally missing the target.
This may be one of the dumbest comments I've ever read on UA-cam.
You're saying he should have bombed civilians, Mein Herr?
@@Janusz-ul1vc in the context of this movie and war, yes. He disobeyed a direct order.
Marvellous! I’ve always wanted to see this, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to see any of it. Good old Howard Hughes, the best excuse for inherited wealth since Paris Hilton! lol
The best aviation war movie, period.
I saw this in the mid 80’s. One of the first old movies I watched. The acting is ….not great in spots but the air battles are still tremendous.
Film acting was still new, and most of these actors came from stage acting, where broad gesture was encouraged, and silent films, where such was the only way to really communicate.
A most eccentric and very rich man. Remember, The Spruce Goose? Well, it was an aircraft that was able to land and float on water too.
Hypocondriac whoremonger ,like any bourgois american multimillionaire ,but most of all,a very bold and clever man.Flying today is really safer because of him.
Its HERCULES! 😤
It could land, shame it couldn't take off.
@@gmamagillmore4812 it could take off
To the staggering heights of one meter lol
When the zeppelin crashed into the ground, it looked a lot like how the Hindenberg crashed (or the other way around).
And the crash happened 7 years after the movie was released!
@@mrrandom1265 interesting, I may look again.
Unlike the ridiculous scene of the "exploding Zeppelin" in the Fly Boys movie.
This was the highest budget movie until "gone with the wind" came out in 1939.
One of my favorite scenes of all time
The actual flying sequences, both real and model, are still brilliant. (The Zep itself was, so I understand, a very large model) To pick up odd threads - Warneford VC destroyed a Zep by bombing it with a Morane Saulnier but, as you say, willful sacrifice never happened. Similarly the only times German crews jumped from a Zep were when it was already going down in flames - the late Peter Strasser, the Zeppelin commander par excellence died over Essex in this way. (One man fell from Warneford's Zep, crashed through a convent roof into a nun's bed and lived to tell the tale, apparently!) The jettisoning of the observation car was allegedly inspired by one being found after a Zep had been downed, but which had most likely become detached in the final fall. The film is great for genuine WW1 aircraft appearing in flight - pity about the rubbish script which is Hollywood tosh at its worst, Jean Harlow and the womanising! Just watch it for the aircraft - they're the true stars!
Its zeppelin not zep
Oh the womanizing, spoken like a true beta.
@@billykuan No crap. More womanizing!
There's an observation car from a Zeppelin in the Science museum, London, unless they've moved it.
INCREDIBLY well done--and believable--especially given the year it was made and the crudity of special effects of the era!
Also, no Zeppelins were ever actually downed by a ramming Allied aircraft.
To make matters worse, people actually believe the repeat of this scene in the later movie "Fly Boys", and worse still, that the Zeppelin could actually explode like a half-empty gas tank.
One was literally bombed out of the air, though, by a Sopwith Tabloid whose original mission was to bomb a Zeppelin shed facility. When the air ship captain panicked and decided to lose altitude to accommodate his VIP passengers, the British pilot managed to gain enough altitude too fly over the Zeppelin with a target for his bomb load over the sir-ship nearly as big as an air-field.
The single survivor was the air-ship's pilot who fell free and landed on a dormitory bed after breaking through the ceiling.
The Hindenburg film shows how rapidly an airship could catch fire though, and a ramming would or could do significant damage to the relatively fragile internal structure. Were no ramming attacks ever attempted? They would clearly be suicidal so not surprising if none ever were.
@@Whitpusmc Actually, they were very difficult to set fire to, and did not burn that quickly.
Of the 97 people aboard Hindenburg, 62 survived and only 35 died, because they had the time to get off even while the ship was burning.
The British found that out early in the war when they would try to shoot them down over their homeland with regular ammunition.
The result of their experiences was the development of two specialized bullets that were mixed in their machine-gun belts for their home defense aircraft.
One was an explosive bullet, with a hollow tip filled with nitroglycerine that was to be impacted by a small steel ball located in the back of the bullet that was thrust forward upon impact with a structural girder part of the airship.
Following that was an incendiary bullet that would ignite any leaking gas caused by the structural damage tearing the gas cells.
Still, at that, it was a "slow burn", as depicted in the Howard Hughes movie, not the exploding gas can as depicted in "Fly Boys".
Tom T Many thanks for that reply! My favorite world war one pilot was Willie Coppens and he did have success shooting down balloons used for artillery spotting so I assumed the Zepplin’s were more flammable then they were thanks again For the education.
@@Whitpusmc None that were recorded. For a trained night fighter pilot to want to do a suicidal ramming attack over the U.K. would mean losing the best assignment he could get as an RAF pilot during WW 1. Being on his home soil within reach of his friends and family when on leave, as well as being billeted in decent housing, instead of borrowed make-do facilities on the Western Front, etc.
Tom T Not to mention dying a fiery death falling from 15,000 feet? Even Willy Coppens said “Of course I had to bring the airplane back, I needed it to bring me home...”
Gotta love how Fritz decides to lighten the load.
Very nice episode.
This is groundbreaking cinema for 1930. Most of us only know this picture from the few excerpts referenced in The Aviator. Film was still very linear in 1930. The dialogue was often indicative and stilted and 99% of American films lacked the organic quality that would come later with Best Years of Our Lives, Grapes of Wrath, Sunset Boulevard & On the Waterfront. Most cinema in 1930 was either palatial song n dance or we, the audience, are watching a play on celluloid. Hughes saw through that crap. And this is when he did. The filters? The angles? The chase planes? C’mon. Pulp Fiction of its decade 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
You lost me at comparing it as the "pulp fiction of its decade". Of everything made in the first half of the nineties, that is your pick for best (most groundbreaking) movie???
The production quality is outstanding !
I have that movie on disc and some of it is on The Aviator.
The quality of the airship sets is amazing.
Incroyable !
Howard did it !
I'd heard about the film "Hell's Angels" before, but never seen it. That excerpt was truly nail biting and amazing for the time it was filmed. Now I want to see the whole thing.
This movie is available on DVD for those who haven't seen it yet.
I would like to experience a zeppelin voyage like an ocean liner in the sky. Problem with helium becoming more rare everyday due to helium escaping earth amosphere.
15:15 "Bauer (soldier), come here."
15:18 "Yes, sir"
15:20 "Are you ready to die for your fatherland?"
15:23 "Of course!"
15:28 "Almighty godspeed!"
Excellent
More action and suspense than todays cgi garbage nicely done!!!
Not only technically impressive, but actually quite haunting in principle, as both sides willingly and even eagerly sacrifice their lives (the poor Germans doing so in vain). It still would have been much better without the stupid voiceovers and exaggerated makeup and facial expressions on the actors (the film industry was clearly having a rough time transitioning from silence to sound).
...the style of acting was transitioning from stage acting, evolving into film acting...
...many films from this era where considered "Photo-plays"...
...a good example of this would be the 1950 film "Cyrano DeBergerac" starring José Ferrer...
...the acting in this film has broad gestures and facial expressions typical of stage acting, yet in some instances the acting is more tailored to the closer framing of a scene being captured on film...
...by this time, at the end of the Photo-play era, they were getting the hang of acting in front of a camera, and the more subtle expressions and gestures of the conversational distances involved in framing a shot at this time...
Modern filmmakers might learn a thing or two about the power of silence or low background noise.
I wish everything at night was actually that blue
Fucking amazing! Way better than anything Hollywood has done lately.
Spectacular
Cool old movie
That was actually pretty good... not accurate but still... entertaining. I love it when their stroking their mustaches in the beginning. So stereotypical. XD
How on earth would u know if it's not accurate?
@@nicks9323 - There`s no way in the world you can see with that accuracy in an unlit cloudy night sky
Gnahahah....niarchniarch*....^^
*moustachestrokenoises
19:53
D-Day: "Ramming speed!"
Dean Wormer: "I hate those guys!"
Led zeppelin rules !!!
I said that in otto's voice ...
And this is how it happened... when Led Zeppelin was born.
Antwerp had a few zeppelin attacks during the Great War, did quite some destruction. Later the first sky scraper in Europe was built there on that spot.
The British pilot be like: The ammunition ran out . . . well, now I'm the ammunition . . .
“Be like”?
So the German bombing officer was the real hero of the movie scene.
The kamikaze attack led the Zeppelin to the stairway to heaven.
LMAO… it fell like a led balloon!
Great scene. Hughes knew what he wanted and got it
5:50 Fun Fact: The ‘Cloud Car’ was a coveted position, because the crew could smoke while lowered
the best ww-I movie. The airwar is more convincing than modern movie with CG
*It's been a dream of mine that if I had the wealth I would resurrect the great airships of the past with all new materials and offer 'The trip of lifetime!' cruising majestically over every continent at low altitudes over Africa and South America at only 500 to 200ft. so passengers could see EVERYTHING just below them with all but inaudible engines at 'cruise-power' so everything can be heard as well and designated 'landing-zones' for excursions for some hours in areas that would be almost impossible to reach without a walking safari in very poor terrain and insects beyond count*
_____________
*To almost silently glide THRU the 'Grand Canyon' at 'maintain headway speed' and see it the way the predator birds see everything...wouldn't that be something to remember!*
_____________
*To cross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and the Arctic as well where even small fish and whales would be visible from only a 100ft. above and the stars at night far from smog and light sources*
_____________
*I think people would pay a 'Kings Ransom' for an adventure like that...and of course lesser amounts for a 'voyage across the U.S. from coast-to-coast' or Canada and even the Arctic regions or 'day trips' for the West and East Coasts*
Sign me up
@@hankjones7829 *Me too!*
*The great German 'Air Ships' like the 'Hindenburg' were considered 'The Ultimate Travel Experience' in their time, and had it not been for America's refusal to sell Helium to Germany the 'Hindenburg' would have been very safe...passengers considered it a rare privilege to enjoy passage on such a majestic 'Island in the Sky' and crews were fiercely loyal...to say to anyone who asked "What sort of work do you do?" and announce "I am a rigger aboard the airship 'Hindenburg!" commanded respect and envy, as only the 'best of the best' were allowed as crewman*
( *Every man needed to be able to handle any function aboard the ship from engines to airframe at any time in case of illness...they were not just 'deck monkeys' or 'wire tighteners'* )
this looks like a movie made in the 60s or 70s!!!
it does NOT look like a 1930s movie!!!
.
never seen it before.... but heard of it (and Hughes, of course)
.
idk... might have to buy this one!!
Fantastic technical drama. The "Titanic" of its day. And like "Titanic," would not be eligible for an Oscar today.
You know the Nazi party was battling for rights to become a legitimate contender in Germany at this time, imagine them watching this and thinking, "we will show them", this movie after 90 years is incredible , how many wars and such advancing human technology in history since then is amazing.
Not bad, good pacing, draws me in
its from 1930.
Grant Schweitzer whaaaat? Nice.
I wanna see the full movie, very hard to find it
Aviator brought me here!
Great movie, i suggest you look up more Hughes documentaries about him, he accomplished so much theres much to learn
wanna whole lot of love
Don't stop here. Watch the whole movie.
was the fire on the crash originally in color? I know there was some color in the original film, but I don't remember this scene being one of the color scenes.
I saw this when I was a little kid in the late 70s and it was all black and white. The bluish tint was added later, this seems to be kinda common with really old films. They did the same with Nosferatu
Little known facts it was common for blimps to cross the Atlantic long before Charles Lindbergh
The British R34 did it in 1919, I'm not aware of any others that did it before Lindberg though.
I love it! Karl in in the ion pod!
Karl Finney!
@@douglasdavis8395 Yes! How do we know he was really in the pod when it was jettisoned??
@@gilbertponder5307 - "It was Condition Red!"
It was called a Cloud Car. It was good to be in if you were a smoker as smoking was banned on hydrogen filled airships but OK if you went out in the Cloud Car.
wow!
Super!
Fantastic! Where can I find it? Thank you Howard.
Get it from Amazon.
Theres howard hughes in blue suede shoes, smiling at the
Majorettes smoking winston cigarettes.
And as the song and dance begins, the children play at home
With needles; needles and pins.
~Genesis song: ''Broadway Melody Of 1974"
album: ''The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway''
Thanks UA-cam for this masterpiece.
However. Very interesting that the demonization of germans already was in full speed at 1930. 3 years before the NatSoc rule started at all.
People tend to dehumanize their enemies in war regardless of similarities or differences. Interestingly, the Germans didn't even start World War I. The Russians backed the Serbian nationalists who assassinated the heir to the Austria-Hungarian Empire, because they wanted a Slavic ally in the region to increase their own power. France had a mutual defense treaty with Russia, so the French joined on the side of the Russians against Austria. The Prussians never needed an excuse to fight, but in this case they definitely did not throw the first punch.
You should see the demonisation of Germans in British story papers from the early part of WW1, it's insane. The bomb-aimer deliberately missing was quite the opposite.
Germany first used unrestricted submarine warfare.
Germany first used poson gas.
Germany first used aerial bombing of cities.
Germany bombarded east coast English towns and cities,
not bothered where the shells landed.
/
some moments were nail-bitingly good...