THE BLUE MAX
UK, 1966, 155 minutes, Colour.
George Peppard, James Mason, Ursula Andress, Jeremy Kemp, Karl Michael Vogler.
Directed by John Guillermin.
The Blue Max looks mostly like a World War I adventure seen from the German side, the twentieth century German knights who play at war in the air in newly invented planes. While they fight, they are noble gentlemen engaged in jousts in a tournament (and in the film there is a Countess who offers her favours to the winner). The aerial photography is excellent and recaptures something of the feeling of this kind of dog-fight warfare.
But there is a bitter tone about the film, at times quite cynical. The disillusion and less than glorious clashes of the twentieth century are here. George Peppard plays well a trench-weary soldier who joins the aerial knights' club and who is looked down on. However, he sets himself ruthlessly to succeed, to win the highest award, the Blue Max medal. He does, cold-bloodedly but skilfully, and by exploiting his rival co-pilot. He is also used by Headquarters as a symbol to boost morale in the ebb of the war in 1918. There is something bitter about this, but the climax is worse when the German general saves official face on learning of how their hero has come by his medal and is able to arrange a spectacular and heroic death.
This mixture of war adventure and modern ruthlessness makes The Blue Max both exciting and interesting.
1. What was the significance of showing Bruno Stachel in the trenches and looking up to the fighter planes during the credits?
2. What impression did Stachel give of his ambitions? Why did he transfer to the air force?
3. Did the aerial photography give you a sense of what it was like to be involved in this kind of warfare and dogfights?
4. Why was Stachel considered out of place with the special group of pilots? Why did they despise him? Was it only because of his common birth and their sense of nobility, or was it something more in his character?
5. Why were the pilots such an exclusive club? (Aerial warfare was new, small, and the men who flew had their own esprit de corps and old fashioned ideas of warfare and chivalry ? as different from the infantrymen.)
6. How did the pilots regard the Blue Max? (Note the sequences of the conferring of the medal and the celebrations.)
7. Why did Stachel want the Blue Max? How much was sense of duty and sense of fatherland? How much idealism and how much pride and self-assertion?
8. What impression did you get of the High Command in Germany 1918 ? morale boosting, the status of the generals and their calculating efforts to use people for propaganda?
9. Was there any more significance in the sub-pilot involving the General's wife besides box-office?
10. Why was Stachel good morale propaganda? Was it morally right for the officials to use him in this way?
11. How did Stachel's claiming of Willy's destroying of planes after the accident show what he was really like?
12. Why did the General's wife want to humiliate him?
13. What did you think of the arranging of Stachel's death? what kind of impression did it leave you with ? as officials got their way and saved face? was it too cynical an ending to the film?
