The Blue Max
U.K. / 1966
Directed by John Guillermin
Starring
George Peppard
James Mason
Ursula Andress
Color / 150 Minutes / Not Rated
Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC)
Fox Home Entertainment
Music from the film
Prelude To Part 2
MP3 format - 1.6 MB
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Review by
Brian Lindsey
 
8
     5   10 = Highest Rating  
Perhaps the best film ever made about World War One fighter pilots — certainly the best ever shot in color. It's also the only one that I'm aware of to focus exclusively on the German side.
    Spring, 1918. Freshly graduated from flying school, Lt. Bruno Stachel (George Peppard, best known to the world as the leader of TV's The A-Team) is posted to a fighter squadron on the Western Front. His background makes him quite different from the other pilots of Jasta 11. Whereas they are the sons of the nobility and landed gentry (many with "von" before their surname), Stachel hails from the lower classes — "common as dirt." He's also an infantry veteran, having survived battles in the trenches to gain a merit promotion to officer rank. Life in the Air Corps proves very different from his experience as a rifle-toting grunt. Instead of sleeping in the mud he now has his own private room. Alcohol flows freely from the fully stocked bar in the officers' mess, where pilots toast each other's victories with vintage champagne.
    Stachel is an outsider, not made to feel particularly welcome by his new kameraden. After living through the hell of trench warfare he scoffs at their notions of chivalry and honor in combat. ("To kill a man and then make a ritual out of saluting him is hypocrisy.") But he's determined to earn their respect, to show them that he's just as good if not better than they are... and to do it the hard way. He's hell-bent on winning the Pour le Mιrite, the coveted "Blue Max", Imperial Germany's highest award for valor. To earn the medal a fighter pilot must achieve 20 confirmed aerial kills. Stachel will let nothing and no one stand in the way of his goal...
    Lavishly produced on an epic scale, The Blue Max is the kind of the film that could only be attempted today with the heavy use of computer-generated imagery — and which wouldn't work nearly so well. Here the aircraft are real, as are the thousands of extras swarming over the muddy trenches in the big battle scenes. Only the cockpit close-ups, which employ the now primitive-looking blue screen process used in the 1960s, detract from the pervading sense of realism. Period detail and attention to historical accuracy are absolutely topnotch. I believe the film represents the finest work ever of director John Guillermin (The Bridge at Remagen, The Towering Inferno). He uses the wide CinemaScope canvas to the full, whether above the clouds in the midst of a dogfight or in the quiet intimacy of a pilot's quarters. Zooms, long pans, crane shots — the camera is almost always moving, adding vitality to the action sequences and preventing dialog scenes from becoming static. The cinematography of Douglas Slocombe (a favorite of Steven Spielberg) and aerial unit direction of Skeets Kelly are superb. Greatly enhancing the visuals is the magnificent score by Jerry Goldsmith, which literally soars. I don't know of any music more evocative of the sensation of flight. His compositions for The Blue Max brilliantly conjure the romanticism of early 20th Century air combat, seemingly in direct contradiction to the script's coldly cynical view of war. Yet it is this dichotomy between glory and carnage that lies at the very heart of the picture.
    The most common criticism leveled at the film concerns Peppard's performance, often cited as wooden and bland. I disagree. Although a trifle old for the part, he's effective at every stage of Stachel's character arc — from the naivetι of the squadron greenhorn, unfamiliar with (and uncomprehending of) the unwritten rules of conduct governing an officer's behavior both in the air and on the ground, through his growing confidence as a skilled combat pilot, to the ruthless "Cobra" whose thirst for glory proves his ultimate undoing. Initially we identify with and root for Stachel as he strives to show up the haughty aristocrats who look down their noses at this upstart commoner. Later, when his obsession to win the Blue Max compels him to cross a moral Rubicon (even to the extent of disobeying orders, resulting in the deaths of fellow flyers), we feel disappointment and despair at his choosing the wrong path. Stachel isn't an inherently bad man — he possesses qualities of decency — but the war has fatally corrupted his soul. Inexorably, Hero becomes Anti-hero. That such an epic, big budget film doesn't shy from turning the audience against its protagonist midway through is one of The Blue Max's most intriguing elements.
    Regardless of one's appraisal of Peppard the cast supporting him is simply outstanding. As the manipulative general who uses Stachel as a propaganda tool to inspire the common volk, James Mason is, as always, excellent; genre favorite Anton Diffring (Circus of Horrors, Faceless) plays his dutiful adjutant. '60s sex goddess Ursula Andress (Dr. No) — for once looping her own voice — is given more to do than just look glamorous as the noblewoman with whom Stachel enters into an illicit affair. Of particular note are Jeremy Kemp (Operation Crossbow) and Karl-Michael Vogler (Rommel in 1970's Patton). Kemp is pitch-perfect as Willi, Stachel's seemingly devil-may-care colleague and competitor; their rivalry for the position of top ace and the affections of Andress' amoral Countess brings tragic consequences. Vogler (squadron commander Heidemann) is totally convincing as the honorable warrior who sees his cherished ideals of chivalry being destroyed by the horrors — and political expediencies — of modern mechanized war.

Fox's DVD of The Blue Max offers an acceptable anamorphic transfer and sound mix at an acceptable price. Most importantly, the film is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 — it should be stressed here that in fullframe Pan & Scan (used for TV broadcasts and the VHS edition) the breadth and depth of the CinemaScope visuals are completely destroyed. The print could've used with a bit of cleaning and seems overly dark in a few scenes but is otherwise fine; the Dolby 2.0 audio track is adequate, but no more, to the task. (Goldsmith's marvelous score fully deserves the deluxe treatment. And with the sound design bar set so high by such modern war films as Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down, it'd be great to hear an 'old' epic like this one gussied up with subwoofer-thumping explosions.) Eight trailers are included as extras: the English, Spanish, and Portuguese promos for the The Blue Max plus trailers for five other films in the Fox War Classics collection. 6/25/05

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