The Hindenburg
George C. Scott leads an all-star cast in this imaginative suspense thriller that attempts to shed some light on the historic disaster even as its intricate plot unfolds. As a colonel assigned by the German government to make certain no one sabotages the Hindenburg on its transatlantic voyage, Scott suspects everyone aboard the luxury ship--particularly a German countess (Anne Bancroft) vehemently opposed to the Nazi regime.
Member Reviews
The Hindenburg is an Unnatural Disaster - Videophile
Sorry for the bad pun. Look at this cast Oscar winners George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft, Star Trek's Rene Auberjonois, Rocky's manager Burgess Meredith, Golden Globe winner Charles Durning, L.A. Law's Richard Dysart and Die Hard's William Atherton. This is a very solid and capable cast who are literally given nothing to work with.
The Hindenburg unfolds not as a mystery or as a documentary, but as a formulaic 70s disaster film. Like the Airport movies, The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure the formula is basically the same.
1. Create a terrifying place for the disaster to occur.
2. Assemble a cast of recognizable faces and give each some unique but irrelevant reason for being there (the fact we recognize them is why we will care when they are in peril)
3. Develop a replaceable subplot as to why the disaster occurs (either sabotage or incompetence)
4. Let your heroes try to save the day
What kills the Hindenburg is the lack of any characters we care about and an abysmal script. George C. Scott, our hero, is a reluctant Nazi who's son died defacing a synagogue... not exactly the stuff sympathy is made of. In fact the people we are supposed to care about are ALL reluctant Nazi's where the bad guys are ardent Nazi's.
The script is very poor. The dialogue is painful and boring.
The only saving grace is the cinematography which was very good. But even that was marred by endless shots of people running and climbing through ubiquitous canvas tunnels and metal scaffolding. The same three pieces of set are recycled dozens of times as the cast run all over the ship.
Simply put it took me three tries to get through this movie, I fell asleep twice. It was only with dogged determination I got through the film at all.Big budget but little results - Coconut_Willy
Great catastrophes like this one have been exploited quite a bit by the movie industry as it lends itself well to spectacular cinematography but to make a full length feature about it requires some sort of story. The problem with this film is that it sorely lacks one. It's certainly not because it doesn't try; it features a multitude of characters but they don't have much to say. The storyline is built around a conspiracy theory that claims the Hindenburg went down due to sabotage but it's rather poorly developed with a multitude of irrelevant sub-plots. Too bad because it does boast a great cast doing an appropriate acting job with a well written dialogue and interesting characters that have nowhere to go and little involvement in the depicted events. The sets and locations are great, the soundtrack is OK and the camera work is quite good. Visually, this movie has some great shots and very good special effects for the period but for me, that's not enough. On top of that, the transfer to DVD is of rather poor quality; quite grainy and highly visible damage throughout. Spectacular but rather uninteresting.
Member Reviews
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The Hindenburg is an Unnatural Disaster - Videophile
Sorry for the bad pun. Look at this cast Oscar winners George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft, Star Trek's Rene Auberjonois, Rocky's manager Burgess Meredith, Golden Globe winner Charles Durning, L.A. Law's Richard Dysart and Die Hard's William Atherton. This ...Big budget but little results - Coconut_Willy
Great catastrophes like this one have been exploited quite a bit by the movie industry as it lends itself well to spectacular cinematography but to make a full length feature about it requires some sort of story. The problem with this film is that it sorely ...