Customer Reviews

The Hindenburg (Widescreen)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ok, so it's not The Poseidon Adventure, however it's better than some viewers have implied it is.

The movie does focus around a sabotage attempt, which is still considered by many to be a plausible cause of the accident, however the film does not take the liberty of undeniably concluding that a bomb, or single saboteur cause the disaster.

The sets are impressive. If you've seen pictures of the actual interior of the Hindenburg, you will certainly appreciate the level of detail taken to authenticate the ship. The period costumes (especially Bancroft's) are good too.

The disaster sequence was shot in black and white so that actual news reel footage of the event could be incorporated in. That footage is especially chilling to watch since you can see the actual passengers and crew (some on fire) jumping from the ship as it crashes.

George C. Scott does a fine job as the colonel assigned by the German government to protect the ship, and Anne Bancroft is intriguing as the witty refer puffing countess. Look for Katherine Helmond (Soap's Jessica Tate) in a rare non-comedic roll.

Beautifully done, although I wished there had been a bit of a history done about the Hindenburg before the actual movie began: Why it was built, why Germany considered that type of aircraft superior to the propelor driven aircraft, how much it cost to cross the Atlantic on one. I also wished that the film had had closed captioning as at times the accents were VERY HARD to understand. My parents were married the day after the horrible accident and often talked about the accident years later, that is why I wish there could have been more of a history before the film began.

Amazon.com often asks reviewers to talk about the DVD, itself, rather than about story-line or acting. Ok. I have had experience in the studio system supervising the transfer of films to tape. Some studios have established a good reputation for their quality transfers, while others simply "dump" product on the market, a practice well known in the VHS format. Universal (THE HINDENBURG) is one of the "guality" studios. That's why I was surprised, and deeply disappointed in this DVD. The opening title sequence is a lovely shot of the Hindenburg flying through the clouds. The film element is loaded with huge scratches and much negative dirt; hardly a "quality" picture element. Throughout, the picture is often grainy, and negative scratches abound. The soundtrack is also very thin, presenting a tin-like quality; again, hardly the rich soundtracks that Universal is known for. I belong to NETFLIX and use the service to preview those films I might want to own later. Unfortunately, due to the poor quality of the transfer, this is one DVD I will pass on owning.

First things first: The picture quality on this DVD is horrendous. Although presented in widescreen, the film print is swimming in scratches and dust. The image is often grainy and ugly, with poor contrast, especially during scenes taking place at night. I really expected better from a major DVD releaser like Universal. Anyone who remembers seeing this in a theater back in 1975 will feel very disappointed with this disc.

As for the film itself, it is another entry in the mid-70s disaster film sweepstakes, although it tries to present itself as more a "whodunit" or espionage mystery; imagine "Murder on the Orient Express" if the trail derailed massively at the finale. George C. Scott, gruff as usual, plays the German Colonel working to determine who onboard the legendary Zeppelin crossing the Atlantic might have a reason for sabotaging the ship. There are plenty of suspects, most of them famous or semi-famous actors (Anne Bancroft, Burgess Meredith, Rene Aberjonois, Charles Durning, William Atherton). Who has the best reason for wanting the Hindenburg to go boom?

This is a fanciful version of the events leading up to the disaster -- the actual reasons for the event have never been determined -- and I have to credit director Robert Wise for maintaining reasonable suspense in a story whose ending is well-known (the DVD cover itself shows you what happens). But, sadly, "The Hindenburg" is mostly hot air: dull, artificial, and a lot of talk going nowhere, and too typical of the formerly great director Wise ("The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Haunting," "The Sound of Music") in the later phase of his career. Many great characters actors onboard get nothing to do. Burgess Meredith is especially criminally underused. Scott and Bancroft have very little chemistry in their vague relationship, and TV actor Roy Thinnes as the Gestapo agent is laughably bad. The only interesting scene before the big finale is an exciting sequence involving the repair of a damaged fin. David Shire's excellent score really excels here. But otherwise the film is just killing time until the long-anticipated climax.

And the climax is an incredible let-down, using a special effects cheat that will infuriate a lot of viewers. The effects in the film are excellent up to this point (marred, unfortunately, by the rotten DVD quality), but for the main event, the film cops out on us in a big way, relying on archival footage instead of new effects. A few of the character stories are never wrapped up either, leaving the viewer with an enormously unsatisfied feeling.

"The Hindenburg" really should only be seen by history nuts and disaster film completists, and they'll be unhappy with poor DVD quality. The casual viewer will be better off with "The Towering Inferno" or "The Poseidon Adventure." (Geez, I just recommended an Irwin Allen film over a Robert Wise film!)

Formula movie with many major actors. The outcome is assured.

Soon it will be May 6, 1937, who was the people on the Hindenburg. What are their stories? A detailed letter was received that said the Hindenburg would be blown up over the U.S. Stopping the trip would be a propaganda coup for the opposition. So Col. Franz Ritter (George C. Scott) is charged with finding if the plot is real and if so stopping it.

He naturally is in the right place to overhear many conversations and we are introduced to the players or passengers. As the ship progresses we learn all the little secrets of the passengers and many who seem suspicious. We follow the logic cool headed

Ritter and the trigger happy Gestapo plant.

So does Ritter do his job?

Whose side is Ritter on?

Whose side are you on?

One of the best parts well played was by William Atherton as Karl Boerth.

The Hindenburg, based on the 1972 Michael Mooney book, mixes historical fact with Hollywood drama as it depicts the last voyage of the famous airship. Although it purports to explain how the pride of the Third Reich burst into flames, the truth will never be known.

Produced and directed by Robert Wise (The Day the Earth Stood Still, West Side Story, The Sound of Music), the film is one of many all-star disaster pictures made in the 1970's. Wisely, he has chosen to open with original newsreel footage, and concludes with the famous radio broadcast by Herbert Morrison.

Screenwriter Nelson Gidding tries hard to make the film a mystery, but it never quite takes off. His scenes revolving around a 'clairvoyant' kook ashore who insists the dirigible will blow up over New York are distracting and hokey. Still, Gidding stays fairly close to the facts and many of the characters are clearly based on real people.

George C. Scott gives a committed and credible performance as a government representative with a conscience sent aboard to investigate potential saboteurs. The always radiant Anne Bancroft adds a touch of romance in her portrayal of a Countess fleeing Hitler's regime. Charles Durning is underutilized as Captain Pruss, Robert Clary adds comedy relief as the clownish Joe Spah, while Burgess Meredith and Rene Auberjonois play a couple of card sharps out to bilk their fellow passengers.

David Shire's symphonic score is a little overdone, while the art direction wavers between stunning and silly. The disaster sequence was shot in black and white, so that actual footage of the tragedy (clearly identified by the grainier images) could be interspersed with new scenes. And, with so many characters trying to escape, the actual 34-second explosion lasts an exciting 6 minutes. [It is remarkable that only 35 of the 97 aboard died in the horrific melee.]

While too much time is spent showing the innumerable suspects creeping about the ship, The Hindenburg is an entertaining film which offers a compelling recreation of life aboard this once popular method of travel. Like the dinosaurs, the age of the zeppelins came and went... Rating: 6 out of 10.

I know this isn't considered a "great" or even "good" film, but because of my intense interest in the real disaster I have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for it. The crash at Lakehurst New Jersey in 1937 ended the era of lighter-than-air travel. Not having seen the film in many years, I decided to rent it when it appeared on DVD.

Sad to say, the movie is even worse than I remembered. I'm a big fan of director Robert Wise, special effects guru Albert Whitlock, actor George C. Scott and many of the other people who worked on the picture, but this is a cookbook recipe of How Not To Make A Movie. The tone is far too serious and portentious. Typical of '70s soap opera-y disaster flicks, there are too many characters with too many problems that really aren't problems at all (or at least, not interesting ones). There are many red herrings, and after a while, like with the boy who cried wolf, we stop paying attention. Hacking away a few of these "subplots" would have made the film leaner and more interesting. (You could leave all of Burgess Meredith and Rene Auberjonois' scenes in the cutting room.) In films like these, the supporting actors tend to be either up-and-coming or fading fast, and most of those here are the latter. Anne Bancroft is underused as the Countess--they can't seem to decide whether to give Ritter a love interest or not. Roy Thinnes is as plausible as a Gestapo agent as Brad Pitt is as a friend of the Dali Lama. And it seems to me they tried to give William Atherton a "devilish" quality that falls flat, probably because Atherton, for all his good looks, has all the charisma of buttered bread. The American officials at Lakehurst and Washington are straight from Central Casting--gruff-but-lovable lugs who just want to see the "flying gas kettle" land safely. (Did the film have to mention one more time that the ship was filled with deadly and explosive hydrogen? Did anyone going into the theater *not* already know that?) About the only mildly interesting supporting cast members are the German captains--Richard Dysart as Earnst Lehman and Charles Durning as Max Pruss have a few mildly memorable moments. Also slightly amusing is Robert Clary as a flaky German acrobat, in part because there was indeed such a character on board the real ship, who was initially the prime suspect in the disaster. (He was quickly cleared.)

Which brings us to George Patton--err, I mean George C. Scott. He seems to be thinking about his golf game most of the time--his performance is phoned in, as were many of his performances after Patton. But what bothers me more is the real spine of the story really doesn't emerge till the move is about 75 percent over. I think the film would have been better if they'd junked most of the silly passenger subplots and concentrated on Ritter being torn between service to and love for his country and the fact that the Nazis are becoming big-time pains in the shorts. As it is, we've long figured out what's going to happen by the time Ritter does, if we're still awake. And by then, it seems neither he nor we care. Oh, and did I mention they make waaaay too much of the Kathie Rauch letter?

As for the visuals, they are very good for 1975 (The takeoff is particularly effective), though in retrospect one can see obvious mattework and multiple exposures. Notice how whenever there's a process shot at Lakehurst or Frankfurt, we see moving figures in the lower part of the screen and the matte paintings in the upper half, but the two sections never cross--the screen is literally cut in two. Today people and vehicles would freely mingle with objects that aren't really there, such as airships, but that was a lot harder back then. As for those who complain that they chickened out by switching to real footage of the crash in the last moments, recreating something that complex would have been impossible in 1975 (they briefly considered it) as well as incredibly costly and dangerous, and I'm not convinced it could even be done today.

Some other positives are David Shire's score--beautiful and faintly nostalgic in the airship sections, a bit heavy-handed in the "Nazi" sections. Costumes and sets are very impressive and as far as I can tell accurate down to the last detail. The landing sequence is interesting just to watch how a crew really landed an 800-foot Zep. (If you've been to Friedrichshafen recently and taken a ride on board the new Zeppelin NTs, you'll know how differently these craft handle today.)

If the visuals are well-done, the presentation is not. This has to be the worst transfer to DVD I've ever seen--was this the best copy Universal had in their vaults, or did they just not look very hard? The picture is scratched and grainy; contrasts are bad, and colors are faded--everyone is a little green in the gills. (Or do the actors just look vaguely ill from being trapped in this turkey?) But there's more. The sound is poorly mixed--the voices are too low, the airship roar too loud. Then at the end the volume of everything suddenly gets very very loud. And despite this being presented in widescreen, and despite my having a widescreen TV, the edges of the credits are slightly cropped.

There are virtually no extras, not even a trailer. Just a few slates that you can click through containing background info on the production. Given the technical award the film justly won, you'd think they'd include a gallery of production stills at the very least. But it would seem Universal is not too proud or fond of this movie. And it's hard to blame them. Much like the event it portrayed, the picture was a disaster that helped bring about the end of an era--in this case, the era of big-budget, glossy disaster epics. So at least the destruction of the Hindenburg served some good!

Most of the special effects in this movie were models and matte paintings done by Albert Witlock, who was an oscar winning artists of paintings and whose work appears (sometimes uncredited) in various movies. Hindenburg was I think his best work. Before CGI, there were matte paintings, and many of them were very good, just like this picture was..

A film based on the Hindenburg disaster with all the possiblities portrayed for its destruction included. Contains actual footage of the Hindenburg disaster. Brilliant acting by George C. Scott & Anne Bancroft.

THE HINDENBURG is a movie which attempts to describe what could have happened on board the famous airship before and during its historic crash in New Jersey in 1937.It is a slow moving film which features an assortment of slightly eccentric characters somewhat in the style of SHIP OF FOOLS. Unfortunately this movie does not measure up to SHIP OF FOOLS although the cast of THE HINDENBURG includes some great actors such as George C. Scott, Anne Bancroft and Burgess Meredith.

In spite of its shortcomings THE HINDENBURG did receive an honorary award for visual and sound effects as well as Oscar nominations for Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Sound. The main competition for Academy Awards in 1975 came from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUKOO'S NEST starring Jack Nicholson.