Dirigible (1931)

Very well executed

As Good As It Gets

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

At a negative cost of one million dollars (and that's in 1931 money), Dirigible still rates as a mighty impressive aerial spectacular. Aside from the obvious use of a hand-cranked camera in some of the location scenes, it is beautifully made by director Frank Capra, no less, from a first-class shooting script by Jo Swerling. Admittedly, Fay Wray is not as attractive;y made up or costumed as she was in her later encounter with King Kong, but nevertheless, some of her close-ups are very appealing. It's also good to see Jack Holt as the number one star. Under Capra's direction, he is far less wooden here than in many of his later 1930's vehicles. He's not the hero, of course. That role is ably undertaken by the now unjustly forgotten but highly personable Ralph Graves. True, this is not a typical Capra outing, but I found it just as interesting and absorbing as his better-known movies.

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.)

In addition to the films Submarine and Flight, Frank Capra directed a third film with both Jack Holt and Ralph Graves: Dirigible. Originally set to be a follow-up to Wings at Paramount, it was eventually sold to poverty row Columbia. It's a heroic adventure story about competing naval officers who attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole. Holt attempts to do it via dirigible and Graves tries the conventional way by ship and sea plane. In between them there's a girl of course: Fay Wray. In their films together, Holt is always the more experienced individual offering some gentlemanly levity to a given situation; where as, Graves is often the young hothead recruit or inexperienced pilot who needs his wings clipped.In Dirigible, Capra features the airship throughout the film, and it's probably one of the few films to do so. Lots of aerial footage of Holt commanding the dirigible and Graves as a pilot move the creaky plot forward. The film was actually based on a real life incident and adapted by Jo Swerling and Dorothy Howell based on Frank Wead's story. As in many films from this period, an obligatory romantic subplot is tacked on, which kind of detracts from the film. Fay Wray is Helen Pierce, Graves' wife. The script fails Wray as she acts discombobulated throughout the film. She lives Graves, but can't stand the danger he readily embraces. Meanwhile, good guy Holt, who plays second fiddle, offers a shoulder to cry on and rescues the big lug Graves on top of it, but he doesn't get the girl. OK as entertainment, but a notch below most of Capra's efforts. **1/2 of 4 stars.

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.