The director Robert Wise attempts to class up the 1970's disaster movie cycle with this meticulous film on the airship Hindenburg disaster. If good direction, special effects and production design could make a good film this would have been a very fine film. However the script leaves quite a lot to be desired and this ultimately lets the film down.
As always with films like this where the primary characters are all supposed to be German the choice was made to let the American actors speak without accents. This has always been an issue where a film is set in a foreign country and the cast is primarily made up of actors not native to that country. It frequently affects the film's verisimilitude.
The special effects are old school with model work and matte paintings extremely well done. At times it seems like they actually built an airship and flew the damn thing to New York. The photography and production design are well executed. Robert Wise was always a director who put a lot of care into his films.
The film is somewhat of a disappointment but nowhere near the failure that the critics labeled it when it was released.
The film runs 125 minutes, written by Nelson Gidding based on a story by Levinson and Link.
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