People are voting emotionally.

From my favorite movies..

A different way of telling a story

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Everyone's familiar with the Hindenburg disaster. "Oh the humanity" (cried out by radio reporter Herbert Morrison as he reported on the crash live) has entered our vocabulary when horrible things happen (or when flightless turkeys are dropped from a helicopter, as in WKRP in Cincinnati.) In any event, no one really knows why the Hindenburg crashed. The most widely accepted hypothesis is an electrical spark caused by a buildup of static electricity. This movie goes in a different direction. It emphasizes the sabotage theory - a theory rejected by both German and American investigators, but nevertheless tailor made for conspiracy enthusiasts and movie making.The movie's pretty well done. It has a feel of authenticity to it. I know about the Hindenburg disaster, but I never really had a sense of what the Hindenburg was like for its passengers. The movie gives us a pretty good sense of what it would be like to be a passenger on such an airship. It's not as luxurious as an ocean liner, apparently, but it would have been a pretty exciting voyage. I liked the sets, and the bit of a picture we get of how the airship flew. That was all well done.There's a large cast of characters in this, headed by George C. Scott playing Col. Ritter, a Luftwaffe intelligence officer who's assigned as head of security for the ship. The sabotage angle is played up with that character, plus a Gestapo agent who's both helping him and watching him, in that delightful fashion Nazi Germany had. Both suspect sabotage; both are looking. As is normal with this kind of movie, there are all sorts of possible suspects on board the ship, and no particular reason to suspect one above any other. In that sense, the movie lost a bit of an opportunity to create more suspense by giving away the identity of the saboteur maybe half way through. Ritter turned out to be anti-Nazi enough to be willing to let the sabotage happen, as long as it didn't endanger the passengers. In the end, the real tension comes from the fact that the Hindenburg's landing at a Naval Air Station in New Jersey was delayed, meaning that the bomb would go off before the passengers disembarked, unless Ritter could stop it - which, of course, he couldn't.The movie has a good cast. Aside from Scott, there's Ann Bancroft and Burgess Meredith and Charles Durning among others. There's even a bit of humour thrown in as a pianist and acrobat on board put on a show for the passengers and crew that turns out to be a shot at the Nazis, poking fun at Hitler and the party with a song called "There's A Lot To Be Said For The Fuhrer." In the end, the portrayal of the fire and crash of the airship is extremely dramatic and well done."The Hindenburg" is an interesting movie. It's highly speculative, but if you're interested in the sabotage theory, this presents at least one plausible sabotage scenario to consider. (6/10)

I think this is a reasonable film.It goes down the sabotage route. I found it to be believable. George C Scott isn't too bad but I thought Roy Thinnes, best known for his role in The Invaders, here playing a typically nasty SS man was better.It mixes actual footage of the disaster with modern film and this doesn't look too great because some is black and white while the rest is in colour. It helps to convey the enormity of what happened though and it must have been terrifying for all those caught up in it. It seems like a bit of a miracle that there were any survivors.William Atherton plays the saboteur who planted the fatal bomb shown as the cause in the film. He was quite convincing although better later on in Ghostbusters I think.It does drag a bit in places but overall I found this film reasonably exciting although tension isn't that high because the eventual outcome is already known.

THE HINDENBURG, a film based on the real-life explosion of the German airship in 1937, is an unusual choice for a disaster movie. The actual disaster element of the scenario lasted for only 30 seconds tops, and inevitably comes at the end of the movie; so the test is to create a film that's engaging even when viewers already know the all-too-brief outcome. Most disaster flicks have scenarios like burning buildings or sinking ships so that the disaster can be sustained for those who've survived the initial incident, but that's impossible here.The result is a bit of a mixed bag of a film. All the usual disaster clichés are present, from the ageing Hollywood actors and actresses fighting against the odds, to the up-and-coming stars mixing with the old timers. The involvement of a potential saboteur adds a spy-style sub-plot that ups the entertainment value no end, and indeed the actors involved in this plot (Scott, Atherton and Thinnes) are the only really interesting stars in the whole thing.The rest of those on board, including an irritating clown, a countess, and a couple of hustlers (including the ubiquitous Burgess Meredith) end up feeling extraneous, but it's not all bad. George C. Scott commands the screen as only he can, while William Atherton's sweaty, desperate performance is a precursor to his villainous roles in the 1980s in the likes of GHOSTBUSTERS and DIE HARD. Thinnes, too, is decent as an officious Gestapo officer.The reliable Robert Wise directs the production, so you're guaranteed that things will remain watchable, and I liked the way the ending turns to black and white so that it can incorporate real-life footage of the disaster (a shame the colourisation process wasn't used in those days). The involvement of the Nazis allows for plenty of portentous, retrospective statements from furrowed-brow cast members. THE HINDENBURG certainly isn't the best the disaster genre has to offer, but it remains admirably straight-faced and well-played for the most part.

But they did that to slip in actual footage of the Hindenburg blowing up into the cheaply done special effects. Honestly, it would just have been better to simulate actually blowing up the ship in miniature. (They'd probably do it in CGI Today.) Okay, the "Melodrama" here is that a Luftwaffe officer played by George C. Scott is trying to uncover a plot to destroy the Hindenburg. Lots of really good actors make up the suspect list, some of whom were past their prime (Burgess Meredith, Anne Bancroft) others you hadn't heard of yet. (Roy Thinnes, Rene Auberjonis.) What probably got this greenlighted was it was the early 70's, and they had all sorts of disaster movies- Earthquake, Airport, Towering Inferno, Poseiden Adventure - so why not a dirigible? Get an ensemble cast of b-list actors and whether they survive or not is up to their q-score.I would be remiss if I didn't point out the other factor here. All the characters we are supposed to sympathize with hate the Nazis. The ones we don't think Hitler was the best thing since sliced bread. Again, this is kind of typical for a movie where the plot is someone sabotaging the ship, I guess, but it's not really credible. It's really a lot of backtracking.