Saturday, May 27, 2023

Movie review - "Zeppelin" (1971) **

 A curio - a big-ish budget World War One flyer movie that seemed to come and go. Presumably inspired by the success of The Blue Max it was financed by one of the Gettys who dabbled in film production. I'm sure there's a story to this. There was about the film, on which five people died while filming a stunt.

Michael York and Elke Sommer are the stars although you'll recognise Peter Carstens and Anton Diffring and Marius Goring. The plot has York go undercover as a traitor during World War One - his family had connections a la Leo in The Departed. The Germans accept him quite easily- the Brits just give him a little wound - and then he's off on a mission to steal, uh, the Magna Carta. Why not just have "plans" or have them kidnap people.

Sommer is the wife of Marius Goring. She's on board the zeppelin but I don't think she figures out York is a spy, does she? Did I miss something?

This should be a simple story - undercover on zeppelin, get thing, try to escape with thing on zeppelin. But it's confusing and we're never sure what Germans know about York.

The opening sequence is odd with York going to a party and sleeping with Alexandra Stewart. I don't mean to be rude but was she sleeping with someone? Because her part gets forgotten. They should've started with York in Germany to help sell the spy stuff more. A better maguffin. Clarify the relationships.

The zeppelin scenes are neat. Big boomy thing. We don't get it until half way through.

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