The Hindenburg (1975)

"One gasbag meets another" is how critic Pauline Kael described the "flatulent seriousness" that director Robert Wise brought to this 1975 thriller about the ill-fated German zeppelin which exploded while landing in New Jersey in 1937. The great air disaster is speculatively depicted here as an act of sabotage, and the airship's trans-Atlantic journey gives the saboteur's plot plenty of time to unfold while the story introduces a variety of characters aboard for the luxurious flight. While the anti-Nazi message is delivered loud and clear, Anne Bancroft and George C. Scott lead an illustrious cast in what amounts to a pre-World War II episode of The Love Blimp, only there's not much romance and precious little suspense. It's all rather flatly intriguing, but aviation buffs will certainly appreciate the meticulous attention to period detail, and the film won special achievement Oscars for its impressive sound and visual effects. Worth a look, if you're a student of this particular chapter of history, and the movie earns some credit for having at least the kernel of a good idea. --Jeff Shannon Amazon.com

Don't Buy This DVD

The movie itself rates maybe 3 stars; but I could barely watch it because the video quality was horrible. Universal should be ashamed at the graininess of the picture. I was so upset that I had been "taken" that I had trouble concentrating on the story. Furthermore, the explosion of the vessel at the end of the movie was filmed in black and white. I understand why -- it allowed for the interspersement of actual historical footage into the movie -- but it took away from what would have been a spectacular visual effect in color. Of course, the video quality was so bad that maybe it would not have mattered. I'm really angry that I bought this clunker. June 2, 2007

The Hindenburg

The Film was very entertaining. Show details of the actually account. I reall enjoyed it May 13, 2007

The story is enticing, although a bit weak in scope...

Based on true historic events and some conjectured documents come to light in recent years, this may be one of the possible reasons of the catastrophy that befell the legendary "Hindenburg", pride and joy of the Third Reich at the time.

The cast is stellar for its times, including George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft, Gig Young, Charles Durning and a young William Atherton and many others.

But alas, George C. Scott, as a German intelligence Officer is a bit weak and compared with other roles he masterfully played, such as Patton (twice, in "Patton" and "The Last Days of Patton"), or even Mussolini, totally seems out of place. He seems bored with the part, rather than playing it to the hilt.

Anne Bancroft as a Jewish German aristocrat, fleeing her home country, plays her role well, but you never get the sense that she truly has to fight for her life.

The rest of the cast is professional, but lacks luster.

Even the actors playing the Gestapo henchmen, seem totally miscast and weak.

Except for a couple of very tense scenes towards the end of the movie, everything seems centered on the "flying" model of the Hindenburg.

At the end, and thank Heaven's for that, the producers decided to include some vintage - cleaned up - material of the actual disaster, intertwining it with studio filmed recreations of the panic and mayhem it caused.

In scope, the picture could have been a masterpiece, if only the characters had been recast and the story a bit more thrilling.

Suppose they had cast Maximilian Schell as the Intelligence Officer and Derren Nesbitt (remember him as SS-Sturmbannführer Von Hapen in "Where Eagles Dare" or as Colonel Hartmann in "The Naked Runner"), or even Karl-Otto Alberty (as Major von Diepel in "Battle of the Bulge", or the German Tiger Tank Commander in "Kelly's Heroes") as his Gestapo Nemesis, and you would have had a true and murderous Thriller in your hands.

Also, although I admire William Atherton's work as an actor, he simply never takes a bite at his role, as the main saboteur suspect. I am sure that Andrew Robinson, Ian Bannen or Tom Courtney would have made a far more convincing suspect.

All in all this is a watchable movie, although it takes a lot of liberties with historical facts, even if just down memory lane, to meet again some old glories at their peak of their respective careers.

It would also have helped, if before transferring this movie to DVD, they had cleaned up the special effects, which remain untouched and it shows.
The sound is mere Stereo, when we all know that the original presentation was in a Surround sound, which greatly enhanced the passages of the overflying Hindenburg and the sounds of its engines passing by.

A very weak effort by Universal to present its own glories in their digitalized format.
Like "Midway" and "MacArthur", Universal just slams their pictures on DVD as is.

They don't care to clean up defects, streaks, jumps, or even to check color continuity. Their movies, especially those of the mid-seventies, which especially in their epic and monumental ones, were originally produced with a Sensurround process are simply transferred with a 2-channel mono process.

While I can understand that reprocessing multi-channel Sensurround sound can be an expensive affair, especially when editing it with new digital 5.1 Dolby sound, and perhaps even in DTS process, I as a marketing consultant, would refrain them from releasing such movies in the state they are in nowadays, unless we had the money to restore them as they originally were shown.

Also missing from this release, and which was included in the LaserDisc of many moons ago, is a Black & White 60 minutes documentary on the evolution of the Zeppelin and the full story of the historic Hindenburg flights.

Why this is suddenly missing, is as much your guess as mine.

But for the price, what could you ask more? It is just 9 dollars, and for this price anything is right, although I would have wished for something more, even if at a higher price.

This choice is yours. Buy it or leave it, and hope that one day Universal may wake up and smell the coffee... April 20, 2007

An interesting conspiracy thriller in a disastrous DVD transfer

No film that Pauline Kael despised on principle (in this case the principle that it was directed by Robert Wise) can be all bad, and so it proves with The Hindenburg, which falls somewhere between a countdown-to-catastrophe period political thriller a la Tora! Tora! Tora!, 70s conspiracy movie and by-the-numbers disaster movie. It's as a disaster movie that it fails the most: the destruction of the Hindenburg was simply too quick to make for much of a climax, and playing the famous black and white newsreel footage intercut with unimpressive cutaways to the less than stellar cast at the end feels like a real cheat, especially since it's often clumsily handled. On the plus side it offers a clever screen story from legendary Monday Mystery Movie TV scribes William Levinson and Richard Link that sees George C. Scott's reluctant Luftwaffe Colonel sent by Goebbels on the airship's last voyage to uncover a plot to destroy the ship and thus embarrass the Nazi regime that uses it for their own propaganda. While the real investigations in Germany and America give the film some momentum, unfortunately the search for suspects among this particular sedately paced Airship of Fools is less than urgent: indeed, it's pretty obvious who is behind the plot and how Scott will react when he uncovers him.

That the supporting cast is more solid than glittering doesn't help: Anne Bancroft's aristocratic old flame has little to do but bemoan the way the Nazis have taken over her estate, cheat at cards and smoke the kind of cigarettes you don't get over the counter, but still manages to make more of her part than the script does; Roy Thinnes does well as the Gestapo man hitting on a young Jewish passenger because "I'm anxious to try one before they run out"; Richard Dysart does the good German wondering what's happening to his country routine as one of the owners (who historically was more than happy to cosy up to the Nazis if it was good for business); Charles Durning keeps the glowering to a minimum as the pro-Nazi captain; Gig Young is clearly drunk in a couple of scenes (yes, I know he's playing a drunk, but he slurs even when he's supposed to be sober half the time); while star-that-never-was William Atherton lurks in the rigging moodily before saving the ship from the danger that his own incompetence puts it in the first place. Shame they couldn't have afforded a couple of British actors for Burgess Meredith and Rene Auberjonois' parts. However, it does boast one of Scott's more natural and likeably underplayed performances before his penchant for drunken Long John Silver impersonations took over, managing to keep it all together until things go bang. The production design is excellent, Albert Whitlock's special effects, while dated, are often impressive and there's a lovely score by David Shire that's recently been released as an extremely limited edition CD. And it's hard to write off a film entirely that has one nervous passenger suggest "Next time, let's take the Titanic."

Sadly, Universal's DVD is an appalling transfer: it may be in the original 2.35:1 widescreen ratio, but it looks like a public domain videocassette, with ghosting, edge enhancement problems and serious problems dealing with the airship's struts. It's watchable, but added to the lack of extras (aside from some production notes), it makes this one a reluctant purchase for the film's more ardent fans only until it gets remastered.
March 5, 2007

The Hindenburg

A superb video that should definitely be reproduced in DVD form! January 10, 2007

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