The Hindenburg ««
PG, 127m. 1975
Cast & Credits: George C. Scott (Col. Franz Ritter), Anne Bancroft (The Countess), William Atherton (Boerth), Roy Thinnes (SS Captain Martin Vogel), Gig Young (Edward Douglas), Burgess Meredith (Emilio Pajetta), Charles Durning (Captain Max Pruss), Richard A. Dysart (Ernest Lehman), Robert Clary (Joe Spah), Rene Auberjonois (Major Napier), Peter Donat (Reed Channing), Alan Oppenheimer (Albert Breslav), Katherine Helmond (Mrs. Mildred Breslav). Screenplay by Nelson Gidding. Directed by Robert Wise.
The problem with the film, The Hindenburg, is the disaster itself. In many ways, the giant airship and the Titanic were alike with the exception of a few notable differences.
The proud British ocean liner many believed “God couldn’t sink” carried over 2,000 souls on its only maiden but fateful voyage. By comparison, the German dirigible had room for under 100 passengers and made a total of ten round trips between Germany and the United States a year before its untimely demise; according to author Joe Garner’s 1998 book, Where Were You When...? that chronicled the catastrophe.
Like the Titanic, several publications promoted the airship’s “Godlike” capabilities. In an early scene, a U.S. admiral reads a quote from a magazine that says, “No voyager on the Hindenburg need fear fire within the ship” in reference to the zeppelin’s highly volatile fuel called hydrogen.
The airship, however, didn’t last two and a half hours like the Titanic did after it hit an iceberg the night of April 14, 1912. As the Hindenburg came in for a much publicized routine landing at 7 p.m., May 6, 1937, in Lakehurst, New Jersey, a tiny flame erupted near the top of the ship’s tail that immediately became a raging inferno. The brilliant fiery conflagration lasted under a minute as the zeppelin came crashing to the ground in a long twisted pile of flaming girders.
Unlike numerous movies made about the Titanic that vividly recreated the sinking from the time it hit the iceberg to its aftermath and mixed a lot of fact with some fiction, the Hindenburg disaster wasn’t enough to make a compelling two hour movie.
If any dramatic events occurred aboard the zeppelin, they happened during the airship’s flight to America that began May 3, 1937 when she left Frankfurt, Germany on its final voyage. It would, therefore, be up to the film’s screenwriter, Nelson Gidding, to provide audiences with an engaging storyline and interesting characters we are able to care about, perhaps feel sorry for, and maybe hope he or she will make it out alive in the end.
As I watched The Hindenburg, it was clear the plot could have gone two ways though it was made over twenty years ago before audiences fell in love with director James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) and were haunted by Oliver Stone’s controversial visions of assassinations and elaborate government cover-ups in JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995).
The Hindenburg could have been a tragic love story for the 1970s about a group of several wealthy passengers eager to begin a new life in America only to have their dreams shattered. Or it could have convinced us; much the way Stone does with some of his movies, that there really was a conspiracy to blow up the “the pride of Nazi Germany.”
The film is not a love story. It does, however, focus briefly on the relationship between a highly decorated Nazi Colonel (George C. Scott) reluctantly assigned to uncover a possible plot to destroy the airship, and a mysterious woman, known as the Countess (Anne Bancroft). She is allowed to leave “the Fatherland” despite the fact she lived on an island the German army was using to build atomic weapons.
Screenwriter Gidding, with help from writers Richard Levinson and William Link, make the movie into one big conspiracy theory but with very little intrigue as Scott’s character broods near the ship’s hydrogen tanks who trusts no one and questions everyone.
Like previous star-studded disaster movies before it, we are introduced to a number of characters making the voyage. Besides the Countess, there is a corporate raider (Gig Young) who keeps a close watch on the time it takes for the zeppelin to reach various destinations, a couple of con artists (Burgess Meredith and Rene Auberjonois) who swindle passengers for money, and a flight engineer (William Atherton) with ties to the German resistance movement.
The movie’s greatest weakness is with Scott’s character who is the picture’s tragic hero. Although he finds the tactics of the dreaded Gestapo Police despicable and has doubts about The Third Reich’s future after his son died in a freak accident during a Hitler youth rally a year before, the stoic airman still remains loyal to the German army.
It would be a juicier role if the script had allowed his character to decide whether he is for or against Nazi Germany. Scott’s character wavers so much from one side to the other as he interrogates passengers that it seems he can’t make up his own mind, until minutes before landing. Should he help the lone conspirator and make sure all the passengers and crew are cleared before the ship blows up? Or should he do what is expected of his countrymen and turn him in?
The best shots worth savoring are the ones where the airship itself is in flight. There is a majestic, graceful, maybe even romantic feel to the scenes where the Hindenburg flies silently among the heavens. I liked the way the film presented a couple known facts about how these magnificent flying machines were constructed and even repaired (some of the repairs to the outside of the ships were done during flight). The movie opens with actual news footage from 1937 of the Hindenburg’s expected arrival in America that is kind of clever considering the two minute news piece was owned by Universal Pictures; the same studio that made this film.
The picture boasts a couple of memorably humorous sequences like the scene where an acrobat (Robert Clary from the television series, Hogan’s Heroes 1965-1971) and an entertainer (Peter Donat) sing a duet bashing the Nazi Government that upsets the ship’s captain (Charles Durning).
And when a couple FBI agents verify an elderly lady’s premonition of the zeppelin’s demise, the woman tells the two men she also predicts Bette Davis will play Scarlet O’Hara in the movie Gone With The Wind (1939).
Because we already know what will happen in the end, there is no suspense; not even in the climactic scene where Scott attempts unsuccessfully, of course, to disarm the bomb. A movie like this should keep us on edge hoping the disaster can be averted. I was so enticed by Cameron’s Titanic when I saw it that up until the final hour, I didn’t want the luxury liner to sink. By comparison, I was so bored watching The Hindenburg that I couldn’t wait for the airship to explode just to see the special effects and even that was a major disappointment.
Director Robert Wise incorporates black and white still shots of how the ship exploded and crashed. It is clear Wise’s intention here was to allow the audience to see how Americans, spectators, Chicago radio newscaster Herb Morrison, and the world witnessed the horrific crash without the use of color television. The final scenes are handled awkwardly, much the way filmmakers incorporated actual battle footage in the movie, Midway (1976) mixed in with the fictional storyline. Scenes like this need to be recreated and not mixed with actual news footage. Doing this just slowed down the sequences and practically ruined the flow of both movies.
It would be wrong of me to tell you who the prime suspect really is. What I will say is if someone did want to blow up the Hindenburg on American soil that day, what would it prove? If I had lived in that era, the disaster would have meant nothing to me other than being an unforeseen tragedy. But seeing pictures of those Nazi Swastikas; which were proudly displayed on the ship’s top and bottom tails, go up in flames, I concluded the event was an epitaph that symbolized the fall of Nazi power when the Germans were defeated at the end of World War II in May 1945.
It would have been a great feat if the screenwriters had been able to convince me there was a plot. The official story, according to Garner’s book, was “that a spark caused by static electricity ignited hydrogen seeping from a ruptured gas bag.”
The idea of sabotage was an interesting notion investigators considered as one of the possible causes of the crash. But they were unable to prove this.
As a result, everything that happens in The Hindenburg is just a lot of endless speculation that goes nowhere. I think at one point as the screenwriters were writing the script, even they gave up on the idea a conspiracy existed.
Why else would the film end with a narrator quoting Chancellor Adolf Hitler saying the disaster was “an act of God?”
©11/30/98
PG, 127m. 1975
Cast & Credits: George C. Scott (Col. Franz Ritter), Anne Bancroft (The Countess), William Atherton (Boerth), Roy Thinnes (SS Captain Martin Vogel), Gig Young (Edward Douglas), Burgess Meredith (Emilio Pajetta), Charles Durning (Captain Max Pruss), Richard A. Dysart (Ernest Lehman), Robert Clary (Joe Spah), Rene Auberjonois (Major Napier), Peter Donat (Reed Channing), Alan Oppenheimer (Albert Breslav), Katherine Helmond (Mrs. Mildred Breslav). Screenplay by Nelson Gidding. Directed by Robert Wise.
The proud British ocean liner many believed “God couldn’t sink” carried over 2,000 souls on its only maiden but fateful voyage. By comparison, the German dirigible had room for under 100 passengers and made a total of ten round trips between Germany and the United States a year before its untimely demise; according to author Joe Garner’s 1998 book, Where Were You When...? that chronicled the catastrophe.
Like the Titanic, several publications promoted the airship’s “Godlike” capabilities. In an early scene, a U.S. admiral reads a quote from a magazine that says, “No voyager on the Hindenburg need fear fire within the ship” in reference to the zeppelin’s highly volatile fuel called hydrogen.
The airship, however, didn’t last two and a half hours like the Titanic did after it hit an iceberg the night of April 14, 1912. As the Hindenburg came in for a much publicized routine landing at 7 p.m., May 6, 1937, in Lakehurst, New Jersey, a tiny flame erupted near the top of the ship’s tail that immediately became a raging inferno. The brilliant fiery conflagration lasted under a minute as the zeppelin came crashing to the ground in a long twisted pile of flaming girders.
Unlike numerous movies made about the Titanic that vividly recreated the sinking from the time it hit the iceberg to its aftermath and mixed a lot of fact with some fiction, the Hindenburg disaster wasn’t enough to make a compelling two hour movie.
If any dramatic events occurred aboard the zeppelin, they happened during the airship’s flight to America that began May 3, 1937 when she left Frankfurt, Germany on its final voyage. It would, therefore, be up to the film’s screenwriter, Nelson Gidding, to provide audiences with an engaging storyline and interesting characters we are able to care about, perhaps feel sorry for, and maybe hope he or she will make it out alive in the end.
As I watched The Hindenburg, it was clear the plot could have gone two ways though it was made over twenty years ago before audiences fell in love with director James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) and were haunted by Oliver Stone’s controversial visions of assassinations and elaborate government cover-ups in JFK (1991) and Nixon (1995).
The Hindenburg could have been a tragic love story for the 1970s about a group of several wealthy passengers eager to begin a new life in America only to have their dreams shattered. Or it could have convinced us; much the way Stone does with some of his movies, that there really was a conspiracy to blow up the “the pride of Nazi Germany.”
The film is not a love story. It does, however, focus briefly on the relationship between a highly decorated Nazi Colonel (George C. Scott) reluctantly assigned to uncover a possible plot to destroy the airship, and a mysterious woman, known as the Countess (Anne Bancroft). She is allowed to leave “the Fatherland” despite the fact she lived on an island the German army was using to build atomic weapons.
Screenwriter Gidding, with help from writers Richard Levinson and William Link, make the movie into one big conspiracy theory but with very little intrigue as Scott’s character broods near the ship’s hydrogen tanks who trusts no one and questions everyone.
Like previous star-studded disaster movies before it, we are introduced to a number of characters making the voyage. Besides the Countess, there is a corporate raider (Gig Young) who keeps a close watch on the time it takes for the zeppelin to reach various destinations, a couple of con artists (Burgess Meredith and Rene Auberjonois) who swindle passengers for money, and a flight engineer (William Atherton) with ties to the German resistance movement.
The movie’s greatest weakness is with Scott’s character who is the picture’s tragic hero. Although he finds the tactics of the dreaded Gestapo Police despicable and has doubts about The Third Reich’s future after his son died in a freak accident during a Hitler youth rally a year before, the stoic airman still remains loyal to the German army.
It would be a juicier role if the script had allowed his character to decide whether he is for or against Nazi Germany. Scott’s character wavers so much from one side to the other as he interrogates passengers that it seems he can’t make up his own mind, until minutes before landing. Should he help the lone conspirator and make sure all the passengers and crew are cleared before the ship blows up? Or should he do what is expected of his countrymen and turn him in?
The best shots worth savoring are the ones where the airship itself is in flight. There is a majestic, graceful, maybe even romantic feel to the scenes where the Hindenburg flies silently among the heavens. I liked the way the film presented a couple known facts about how these magnificent flying machines were constructed and even repaired (some of the repairs to the outside of the ships were done during flight). The movie opens with actual news footage from 1937 of the Hindenburg’s expected arrival in America that is kind of clever considering the two minute news piece was owned by Universal Pictures; the same studio that made this film.
The picture boasts a couple of memorably humorous sequences like the scene where an acrobat (Robert Clary from the television series, Hogan’s Heroes 1965-1971) and an entertainer (Peter Donat) sing a duet bashing the Nazi Government that upsets the ship’s captain (Charles Durning).
And when a couple FBI agents verify an elderly lady’s premonition of the zeppelin’s demise, the woman tells the two men she also predicts Bette Davis will play Scarlet O’Hara in the movie Gone With The Wind (1939).
Because we already know what will happen in the end, there is no suspense; not even in the climactic scene where Scott attempts unsuccessfully, of course, to disarm the bomb. A movie like this should keep us on edge hoping the disaster can be averted. I was so enticed by Cameron’s Titanic when I saw it that up until the final hour, I didn’t want the luxury liner to sink. By comparison, I was so bored watching The Hindenburg that I couldn’t wait for the airship to explode just to see the special effects and even that was a major disappointment.
Director Robert Wise incorporates black and white still shots of how the ship exploded and crashed. It is clear Wise’s intention here was to allow the audience to see how Americans, spectators, Chicago radio newscaster Herb Morrison, and the world witnessed the horrific crash without the use of color television. The final scenes are handled awkwardly, much the way filmmakers incorporated actual battle footage in the movie, Midway (1976) mixed in with the fictional storyline. Scenes like this need to be recreated and not mixed with actual news footage. Doing this just slowed down the sequences and practically ruined the flow of both movies.
It would be wrong of me to tell you who the prime suspect really is. What I will say is if someone did want to blow up the Hindenburg on American soil that day, what would it prove? If I had lived in that era, the disaster would have meant nothing to me other than being an unforeseen tragedy. But seeing pictures of those Nazi Swastikas; which were proudly displayed on the ship’s top and bottom tails, go up in flames, I concluded the event was an epitaph that symbolized the fall of Nazi power when the Germans were defeated at the end of World War II in May 1945.
It would have been a great feat if the screenwriters had been able to convince me there was a plot. The official story, according to Garner’s book, was “that a spark caused by static electricity ignited hydrogen seeping from a ruptured gas bag.”
The idea of sabotage was an interesting notion investigators considered as one of the possible causes of the crash. But they were unable to prove this.
As a result, everything that happens in The Hindenburg is just a lot of endless speculation that goes nowhere. I think at one point as the screenwriters were writing the script, even they gave up on the idea a conspiracy existed.
Why else would the film end with a narrator quoting Chancellor Adolf Hitler saying the disaster was “an act of God?”
©11/30/98
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