Hacker Cinema
The Blue Max
1966 · Film · 156 min
Directed by John Guillermin
A young pilot in the German air force of 1918, disliked as lower-class and unchivalrous, tries ambitiously to earn the medal offered for 20 kills.
2 positive1 neutralfrom 3 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
10 comments on Hacker News
I rarely read about the contribution a good music score has to a movie's popularity. A great score makes the movie. For example,
The Blue Max, Ben Hur, the first Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dr Zhivago, Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and, of course, Blade Runner!
None of the history classes in grade/high school I attended advanced after 1900.
However, I knew a lot about WW2 because my dad (and relatives) was heavily involved in it, and also became a historian when he left the AF. He had a mountain of history books, mostly about aviation and WW2. I read some of them, and watched movies like "The Blue Max" and "The Battle of Britain", the "World At War" series, and so on. There are also endless WW2 documentaries on TV.
My neighbor was a paratrooper who lost his leg, my dad's best friend was a P-51 pilot who had his face burned off in combat. WW2 vets were everywhere. They're all dead now, and WW2 is ancient history.
I'll have to go check out "Blue Max" -- remember the movie but haven't seen it in years. My favorites: "Last of the Mohicans" soundtrack by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman; "Inception" by Hans Zimmer; "Interstellar" by Hans Zimmer
I like aviation movies. Consider:
1. The Blue Max
2. Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
The special effects in them were - they built flying replicas of the airplanes used in the films! Can you imagine that happening today?
Two great and very special movies. Both made in the 1960s.
A special mention for Battle of Britain - they didn't build replicas, but dredged up the last remaining flying Me-109s and Spits and, well, seeing and hearing them fly is glorious.
You are correct, the official moniker is Bf-109, but the Allies referred to it as the Me-109.
BTW, since we are Birds of a Feather, I bet you'd like the movie "The Blue Max". It's really hard to find on bluray, but worth it! The flying sequences are first rate, and no cgi.
> P.S. It's a tragedy that an excellent movie like TBM is not available on bluray. Sigh.
I was curious, and it looks like it had a Blu-ray release, but it was a limited production run. I guess they decided to constrain supply in order to get a high price.
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Blue-Max-Blu-ray/87746/#Overview
Armies got a lot better when the officers stopped being restricted to the nobility. This was forced on European armies by the slaughter of the nobility in WW2.
The subtext of the movie "The Blue Max" was about commoners becoming acceptable as fighter pilots because the knights were wiped out.
P.S. It's a tragedy that an excellent movie like TBM is not available on bluray. Sigh.
That was the theory. The fittest were selected for combat, and as they got ground into hamburger the less selective the drafting went.
For a similar example, initially WW1 pilots were selected from the nobility. Once those got massacred, the various Air Forces had to abandon that idea, and allow commoners in. The subtext of the movie "The Blue Max" was about that transition.
(The life expectancy of a British WW1 RAF pilot was 6 weeks. There's also a movie about that, "The Dawn Patrol".)
This also happened to the officers, which ended the notion of officers being restricted to nobility.
Check out the movie "The Blue Max". Initially, WW1 pilots were selected from the nobility. The death rate was so high that they ran low on nobility and were forced to recruit pilots from commoners. TBM is about the transition.
The soundtrack is also a favorite of mine. I don't think any other piece of music captures so well what it's like to fly.
In WW1, the aviators were drawn from the nobility. Until they all got slaughtered. Then the lower classes started getting accepted into the flying schools.
This is the background of the movie "The Blue Max".