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THE BLUE FLUNK It’s been said The Blue Max has fierce champions but I’ve yet to meet any except the permanent striplings over at Film Score Monthly. What’s there to champion? The heralded air battles shot by Skeets Kelly are adequate at best and the planes counterfeit, using juiced up motors, smoke cylinders and, writes the dumbfounded novelist Jack D. Hunter, whose novel is the basis for the movie, “machine-guns that look like Space Cadet props spouting flame without benefit of ammo tracks.” This is the kind of class-exclusive war movie—about German World War I aces having a go at winning the highest military flying honor bestowed by Kaiser Wilhelm II—showing the elite conveniently finding time for gaming, champagne and sex on or near the air field. Whoever decided to push the crash & burner as reserved seat stuff has kept his secret. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe wasn’t fortunate enough to conceal blame for some of the least appealing work of his career and, making matters more cringeworthy during a few big city engagements, including Chicago, the CinemaScope prints were rumored to be surreptitious blow ups using Fox’s reconditioned Grandeur 70. Perhaps initiated by some sharp-eyed viewers suspicious that Fox’s 1950s trademark wide-screen process would be used for popular 70mm showcasing in 1966, and equally bothered by what seemed unusually coarse and distortive imagery adding to the already depressive atmosphere by production designer Wilfrid Shingleton and art director Fred Carter, their belief in a switch to whatever kind of print they were looking at generated into mock as Granulur 70. The bad mood-inducing visuals change with the Blu-ray edition, delivering an improved viewing for the right wrong reason—the joy in disliking George Peppard in his natural diva persona. The cavalier essence he imparts here (and in other movies) appears to be his personal knack in screwing us over, so the comeuppance received is an act of earned destiny, as his character’s fate is attitudinally the opposite in Hunter’s book. Actually in the air very little throughout the movie, he did have four months of special flying training before filming started, enough for the Harvard Lampoon to name him the year’s worst actor. (Early on he has one redeeming moment when tossing a bottle of booze to a conscript; later he has a scene against his antagonist during which he moves his head like a robot forecasting the years-later arrival of Armie Hammer.) James Mason is once again downright puny in uniform, just as he is in 1951’s The Desert Fox, 1952’s The Prisoner of Zenda and 1977’s Cross of Iron; the impotence is most noticeable in not having sufficient neck for military collars. So poor sexy wife Ursula Undress, wearing a towel to cover her boobs but not the mannish back, has to get her kicks from you know who, though it’s likely any real affection she needs will come from the little kitty meowing on her hotel pillow. With a blond Jeremy Kemp and that short-of-tongue phenomenon Anton Diffring. Directed by John Guillermin; music by Jerry Goldsmith. Filmed in Ireland. (Opening 6/29/1966 at the Cinestage, running 14 weeks.) ROLL OVER IMAGE
Text COPYRIGHT © 2002 RALPH BENNER (Revised 9/2024) All Rights Reserved. |
