The Hindenburg (1975)

[jeffm2016]

Is there one version or country edition for this movie better than another?

Is there a “sensuround” audio on any?

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by jeffm2016

Is there one version or country edition for this movie better than another?

Is there a “sensuround” audio on any?

Hindenburg wasn't a Sensurround movie.

[Todd Tomorrow]

Sensurround would be a challenge in a film about an airship.

[jeffm2016]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

Hindenburg wasn't a Sensurround movie.

Oh that explains why I couldn’t find it 8)

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Todd Tomorrow

Sensurround would be a challenge in a film about an airship.

They could have used it during the explosion at the end, and maybe during the scene where Atherton is outside patching up the hole with the wind beating against him, but yeah it's a pretty talky picture overall.

[Professor Echo]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

They could have used it during the explosion at the end, and maybe during the scene where Atherton is outside patching up the hole with the wind beating against him, but yeah it's a pretty talky picture overall.

Agreed, but it's still entertaining, as most George C. Scott films are. RC, what did you think of the way they handled the crash using original footage of the disaster? At the time of its theatrical release, it was pretty much praised by the press critics. I liked it when I first saw the movie on DVD years ago, but I wonder how the effect holds up with most people?

[Aclea]

It was always the most disappointing aspect of the movie for me and felt like a copout. But then, from a cinematic point of view, a disaster movie about a disaster that took just 37 seconds from start of the fire to hitting the ground was always going to be a problematic climax to a film even if they did it with then-modern special effects in color.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

Agreed, but it's still entertaining, as most George C. Scott films are. RC, what did you think of the way they handled the crash using original footage of the disaster? At the time of its theatrical release, it was pretty much praised by the press critics. I liked it when I first saw the movie on DVD years ago, but I wonder how the effect holds up with most people?

When I watch a film like this I'm very much cognizant of the era in which it was made and for 1974/5 it was an effective method of depicting the tragedy. The film received an Oscar for its Visual Effects, so you can't argue with that.

If the film were made a couple of years later, post-ILM, I would have been far less forgiving.

[Professor Echo]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

When I watch a film like this I'm very much cognizant of the era in which it was made and for 1974/5 it was an effective method of depicting the tragedy. The film received an Oscar for its Visual Effects, so you can't argue with that.

If the film were made a couple of years later, post-ILM, I would have been far less forgiving.

This is very interesting to me because I'm not certain if it's because of the period in which it was made that I am able to make allowances for it or if I sincerely believe it to be effective within the context of the film.

The other night my wife showed me one of her guilty pleasures, the 2004 disaster film THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. I thought all the CGi in it looked horribly amateur by today's standards and often out and out laughable. It took me right out of the film every time they would cut to some cartoon effect. But the sequence in THE HINDENBURG doesn't inspire the same ridicule from me. Why?

[spudeus]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

They could have used it during the explosion at the end, and maybe during the scene where Atherton is outside patching up the hole with the wind beating against him, but yeah it's a pretty talky picture overall.

When I watched my copy I was fairly impressed by the 'environmentals' in the sound mix - the engines were usually present as a soft hum or a loud thrum, depending on where the characters physically were inside the zeppelin. Just as I imagine would be the case in the real thing!

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

This is very interesting to me because I'm not certain if it's because of the period in which it was made that I am able to make allowances for it or if I sincerely believe it to be effective within the context of the film.

The other night my wife showed me one of her guilty pleasures, the 2004 disaster film THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW. I thought all the CGi in it looked horribly amateur by today's standards and often out and out laughable. It took me right out of the film every time they would cut to some cartoon effect. But the sequence in THE HINDENBURG doesn't inspire the same ridicule from me. Why?

I've never actually seen The Day After Tomorrow. Was the CGI in that movie good by the standards of the day it came out though? I mean, you look at films such as Die Another Day or The Mummy Returns and even at the time of release you can tell the CGI is crap.

I'm just thinking that if they used the technology of 1975 to try to recreate the Hindenburg disaster, it might actually look kind of stupid. But doing it the way they did it, it worked within their limitations. I also think it might have been an artistic decision on the part of Robert Wise because the original footage of the tragedy is so familiar to us and well documented, unlike something such as the Titanic where they have no choice but to recreate.

Originally Posted by spudeus

When I watched my copy I was fairly impressed by the 'environmentals' in the sound mix - the engines were usually present as a soft hum or a loud thrum, depending on where the characters physically were inside the zeppelin. Just as I imagine would be the case in the real thing!

I noticed that too, all those little hums and echos when they are walking through the framework of the airship. It also received an Oscar for its Sound Effects.

[mar3o]

The Day After tomorrow looked quite good when it was released. That's the problem with cgi - it tends to not age well if it isn't top-notch. I think as it gets better and better, we're at a point now where I think some of the cgi we see (and don't see) now will hold up even in the future. But not all films of course will hold up so well. Much of the cgi in films these days is hidden, and we aren't even aware of it.

Of course not all blue-screen and model work holds up either. 80's/90's bluescreen often looks awful now.

The Hindenburg effects do indeed hold up very well even now.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by mar3o

Of course not all blue-screen and model work holds up either. 80's/90's bluescreen often looks awful now.

Yeah, I was watching In The Line Of Fire recently and all of the campaign scenes used blue screen work or CGI to digitally insert the actors into actual political rallies. It wasn't something that stood out to me before, but now it looks awfully obvious and really quite distracting.

[Aclea]

That can be a problem with seeing films in hi-def on smaller screens than intended. Many films when blown up onto a 70ft screen in 35mm would have the edges softened slightly in the process in the way photographs or photocopies lose detail when blow up too large, but 'shrunk' to TV size things like matte lines with model shots/blue screen or the difference in resolution between CGi effects and the real life elements come into literally much sharper focus (often because one element of the image is first generation while the other is second or third) and becomes more noticeable. It's not always that the effects looked that bad on the big screen or on lower resolution formats.

You can see a variation of that problem in all of Harryhausen's films, in their case on both big and small screens, where the creatures are always in higher resolution than the real life elements because of the way he executed the effects.

[GrouchoFan]

Bumping thread for 85th anniversary of the disaster.

[scififan73]

Originally Posted by GrouchoFan

Bumping thread for 85th anniversary of the disaster.

Not just the disaster itself, but this was also the end of a way of travel— luxurious air travel via blimp.

[harry o]

Steel book cheap on offer at HMV at the moment.

[dubhousing]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

At the time of its theatrical release, it was pretty much praised by the press critics.

Pauline Kael really ripped into the movie. Granted, she was often an exception among film critics.

[Professor Echo]

Originally Posted by dubhousing

Pauline Kael really ripped into the movie. Granted, she was often an exception among film critics.

She certainly was. An excpetionally arrogant jerk.

That's an interesting post you quoted from me from a few years back and right now I wouldn't even be able to tell you what critics praised the film upon release, but when I posted that I probably could have!