Dirigible

Okay, I know, they are not blimps. They are Zeppelins. "Airships" was the preferred term by the U.S. Navy.

This is a very exciting action film for 1931. Apparently made with quite a high budget. I saw model shots, large sound stages filling in for Antartica, thousands of extras, real airships, and a gigantic ticker tape parade shot on location in New York City. All of these things cost much money. The U.S. Navy's use of airships was so brief that this film also marks one of the few stories about this chapter in our military history.

This film proves that Capra was also adept at high intensity action directing (for 1931) as well his usual character-driven morality plays that he became so well-known for.

The one thing that is the most striking to me about (some) early talking pictures, of which this is one, is that they have hardly any music score. This is true here, and only adds to the isolated feeling in the scenes of the doomed expedition struggling to escape from the frozen tundra. Plenty of sound effects in the scenes of the doomed Pensacola going down, but no music. In fact, the film even uses a few silent film style narration cards.

Anyway, in spite of this film dating from 1931, it has aged really well and doesn't seem too dated at all. A nice action/adventure film. The print they showed on TCM on television was in very good shape, even the sound was strong in most places. Yes, the love story seemed tacked on, but there are thousands of films in the history of Hollywood that could have survived artistically with their romantic subplots (probably inserted at the insistence of cigar-chewing studio bosses to get "the female market") jettisoned. In any case, this movie is quite entertaining and Worth checking out.

While "Dirigible" (1931) is notable as Frank Capra's best early film, the real credit for making something that was both a huge hit during the early years of talking pictures and an old film that will interest even today's jaded action movie fans should go to Editor Maurice Wright. Wright had to assemble this early blockbuster from what Capra shot and what the U.S. Navy provided in the form of stock and promotional footage. He did a great job and you rarely are aware that you watching a movie, let alone a fictional drama.

The story is a historical concoction, mixing elements of Robert Falcon Scott's sledding disaster at the South Pole and Nobile's ill-fated North Pole expedition in the airship "Italia". It is likely the producers of "The Red Tent" (1970) borrowed heavily from Capra's technique when they dramatized the crash of Nobile's dirigible for their film.

The destruction of the fictional dirigible "The Los Angeles" is the most interesting sequence in the film but the Navy's promotional footage is also quite interesting, particularly to viewers 75+ years later. There is extensive coverage of operations on the first USS Lexington; which would be sunk during WWII (The Battle of the Coral Sea). The rest of the simulated action stuff leaves something to be desired but was no doubt quite credible to viewers at the time of the film's release.

I wouldn't pay much attention to complaints that the back-story is lame and boring. It features a pre-Kong Fay Wray. She is younger and has her natural darker hair color. As such, I think you will find her about as beautiful as any actress in film history, especially in profile. Apparently Capra quickly figured out what he had with Wray as he makes extensive use of close-ups during her scenes; a technique that would not really come into fashion until the 1970's. And Wray exhibits considerable acting talent in these scenes, earnestly sincere as the wife of a glory-seeking Navy pilot. And since you can't take your eyes off her, any complaints about scripting and content are pretty much irrelevant.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

As we watch the Twentieth Century disappear in our wake, we're going to find films like this more and more precious. I mean, can you imagine? -- Here's a film that takes the airship absolutely seriously as an equal partner with the airplane. Here's a film that shows you basically how an airship was constructed and what it looked like inside, and all that as part of the plot! And if you're going to interrupt the main plot with a soap opera, who better to put in front of your eyes than the beautiful Fay Wray? And what a great way to get out of the romantic sub-plot's basic dilemma -- nice, clean, and fast. All things considered, a more than satisfying way to spend an evening.

Return to the heady days of the 1920s, when the strategic bombers of World War I were still seen as a viable alternative to the rickety airplanes of the day. While the acting is wooden and stereotypical (brave fly boy, conservative large "ship" commander, frail stay at home wife), just seeing the footage of the long-gone rigid airships is worth the tariff.

The best shot is near the beginning, when the camera pans upward, past round naval observation balloons, surprisingly modern non-rigid 'blimps' flying in formation, and then (above them all) the massive (larger by a factor of five or more) dirigible of the title.

Scenes of the real dirigible flying, landing, dropping naval "parachute men", and hooking up to the mooring mast are also worth the time.

Not so much the rest of the movie. Period special effects do not hold up well under modern scrutiny, and the silly pining away of Fay Wray really gets in the way.

(Odd too is the fact that the Review Board passed on a plot line involving an obviously cheating on her husband woman, including a racy scene at the beach where the two have been sharing an afternoon swimming, barely clad by 1930s standards). Perhaps this was during the Hays to Breen transition period, and it slipped under the radar.)

Note that the poor USS Pensacola (a mythical Navy airship; there was a cruiser by that name but never an aircraft) doesn't catch fire, despite the dramatic breakup of the structure. US airship were filled with helium (due to the almost monopolistic corner of the world's supply of helium by the US), and although they suffered through a series of dramatic crashes (Shenandoah, Akron, Macon), none of them caught fire a la the Hindenburg.

Buy it in the newly released DVD for the flying, and try to ignore the rest. (Oh, and Fay Wray looks far better as a brunette than she ever did as a blonde.)

Lakehurst, the setting for much of this film was the epicenter of American ballooning and dirigibles, before the second world war and through it as well. A recent book, _They sailed the skies : U.S. Navy balloons and the airship program_ led me to this film, since it represents an easy way to get a look at some of the men and machines in action. Frank "Spig" Wead is the writer and Frank Capra directs. Wead of course was a flyer himself and only turned to writing after a crash broke his neck, crippling him. See WINGS OF EAGLES by John Ford for a dramatization of his life. The early sound era is not known for the sleekness of it's screen story-telling, but if you have interest in the history of zeppelins, or pre-WW2 aviaton, this film is worth watching.