Dirigible

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.

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.)

A reasonably decent motion picture for its time, the one attribute that makes this film stand out from its standard storyline, is its footage and scenes regarding dirigibles. When this film was released in 1931, it was the golden age of zeppelin travel, and the crash of the Hindenburg, which doomed this type of transportation, was still five years in the future. There were numerous scenes shot at Lakehurst Naval Air station, where ironically the Hindenburg crashed, that was the center of dirigible activity at the time for the U.S. Navy. As someone who is interested in this subject, I found this part of the movie fascinating as well as the part of the story that took you behind the scenes of airship travel and how much danger could be involved. The riveting scene dealing with the crash of a dirigible in a violent storm brought to mind the U.S. Navy zeppelin Akron, launched the same year as this film, which was destroyed in a similar storm only two years later. It was also interesting to see actress Fay Wray two years before she would gain fame with her role in King Kong. I had the opportunity to catch this film recently during an airing on the TCM cable channel and would recommend it for anyone with a similar interest.

Aside from featuring Fay Wray BEFORE she became famous in King Kong, the movie has value as historical record, because of the scenes of the U.S. Navy's dirigible, LOS ANGELES. The LOS ANGELES served a dual role in the film, first as the fictional PENSACOLA, destroyed in a storm at sea, and then as her real self. The loss of the PENSACOLA is prescient in a way, because her successors, the very real AKRON and MACON, which had yet to enter service when the movie was made, were subsequently both lost at sea in storms, bringing an end to rigid airships in the U.S. Navy. A predecessor, the SHENANDOAH was lost in 1928 in a storm over Ohio.

When this movie was made, only the LOS ANGELES was in service. The movie shows excellent closeup film of the ship mooring at Lakehurst N.J. as well as her experimental trapeze which allowed an aircraft to moor to the ship while in flight. This feature was incorporated in AKRON and MACON, along with a hanger to stow the planes aboard. These two, the biggest in USN service at 800 feet could each carry 3-4 planes. The planes could be "captured" on the trapeze, brought inside and then launched from their trapeze. An amazing sight to see!

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.