Blue Max, The (1966)
The Blue Max (1966), directed by John Guillermin.
A German foot soldier of the lower classes gets out of the trenches and becomes an officer in the aristocratic flying corp. He'll do anything to prove himself. The Blue Max medal requires twenty "kills" in the air. For him: whatever it takes.
This plays better than I remember. We're moving into a period when war films also had to be anti-war films and this provides additional tension in story construction. WW1 is a good vehicle for that because no one ever pretended it was the Good War; rather a civilizational disaster for all involved.
Some the interwoven threads work better than others:
The aerial photography is spectacular, the best and most beautiful biplane combat scenes I can remember. Forget about any anti-war message here.
When in the air, WW1 fighter pilots are smug predator gods. They know it and like it, we know it can can't deny it. They deal death to other planes and also stoop to strafe and bomb ground forces without compunction.
We also have one of the better presentations of the muddy, hellish ground war.
Our hero is not a likeable character and George Peppard is a cold actor. We sympathize with his need to get out of the trenches, and to force a place among the upper-crust fliers, but he is unnecessarily arrogant and prickly throughout. Most of the British actors do German accents, but he does not, which actually works: American = "common", British posh = German elite.
He has some loveless passion moments with the General's wife. One scene was cut from the original American theatrical release because Ursula Andress was showing just a touch too much boobage.
As in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), we see the passing of an age of the world, where the gentleman must give way to more savage practitioners of total war.
The director was an RAF flier in WW2.
Jerry Goldsmith score, of which he seemed very pleased.
Filmed in Ireland. When watching WW1 flying films I can't help thinking of The Stunt Man (1980).
Twilight Time Blu-ray. An isolated score gives a more complete edit of the music than used for the film itself. The usual commentators provide a fun track with quite a bit about Jerry Goldsmith, and pause to listen to alternative musical cuts not used in the final film.
The image is pretty fine, although sometimes looks "blue", as if adjusted to modern fashion. Maybe this was in the original, but the color contrast of the blue uniforms against the muddy brown fields looks too vivid to me.
