User:Bzuk/Sandbox/The Aviator
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| The Aviator | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | Martin Scorsese |
| Produced by | Michael Mann Sandy Climan Graham King Charles Evans, Jr. |
| Written by | John Logan |
| Starring | Leonardo DiCaprio Cate Blanchett John C. Reilly Alec Baldwin Kate Beckinsale Alan Alda |
| Music by | Howard Shore |
| Cinematography | Robert Richardson |
| Editing by | Thelma Schoonmaker |
| Distributed by | USA/UK/Germany theatrical UK/Germany DVD Miramax Films Buena Vista Distribution Latin America/Australia theatrical USA/Latin America/Australia DVD Warner Bros. Spain 20th Century FoxUK Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) |  17 December 2004 (premiere) 19 December 2004 (premiere) 25 December 2004 10 February 2005 |
| Running time | 169 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $110 million[1] |
| IMDb profile | |
The Aviator is an Academy Award-winning 2004 biographical drama film, directed by Martin Scorsese, and based largely on the book Howard Hughes: The Secret Life by Charles Higham. It tells the story of the eccentric aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, following his life from the late 1920s through the 1940s, a time when Hughes was directing and producing Hollywood movies as well as test-piloting his own groundbreaking new aircraft. The film also illustrates Hughes' descent into obsessive compulsiveness and reclusiveness.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
[[Image:John c reilly11.jpg|thumb|left|Leonardo DiCaprio (right) as Howard Hughes and John C. Reilly (left) as Noah Dietrich]] The Aviatorbegins with nine-year-old Hughes being bathed by his mother, who warns him of disease: "You are not safe." This shows the root of his obsession with germs. Next as a 22-year old, Hughes is preparing to direct Hell's Angels. He hires Noah Dietrich to run Hughes Tool Co, while he oversees the flight sequences for the film. He is two cameras short and unsuccessfully tries to get loaners from Louis B. Mayer, who laughs at him and tells him to go back to Texas. Realizing that the audience will not be able to have a sense of space from the shot dogfight footage, Hughes becomes obsessed with finding "clouds that look like giant breasts full of milk" to re-shoot against. He hires UCLA meteorologist Professor Fitz to determine the perfect formation, and ends up waiting eight months. When the Professor tells him there are clouds in Oakland, California, Hughes moves production there, and re-shoots the dogfight himself.
By 1929, the film is finally complete, but, while watching The Jazz Singer, Hughes realizes that "talkies" will become the rage, meaning Hell's Angels will have to be re-shot for sound, costing another year and $1.7 million. The film is a huge hit, and Hughes is the one laughing now. He makes Scarface and The Outlaw. However, there is one goal he relentlessly pursues: aviation. During this time, he also pursues Katharine Hepburn. The two go to nightclubs, play golf, and fly together, and as they grow closer, move in together as well. During this time Hepburn becomes a major support and confidant to Hughes, and helps alleviate the symptoms of his obsessive-compulsive disorder somewhat. [[Image:Hepburncfr.jpg|thumb|left|Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn]] As Hughes's fame grows, he is seen with more starlets. He takes an interest in commercial-passenger travel, and purchases majority interest in Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA), the predecessor to Trans World Airlines. In 1935, he test-flies the H-1 Racer, breaks the speed record of Charles Lindbergh, and crashes in a beet field. "Fastest man on the planet," he boasts to Hepburn. Three years later, he flies around the world in four days, shattering the previous record by three days. Meanwhile, Juan Trippe, owner of Pan American Airlines, and Senator Owen Brewster worry over the possibility that Hughes might beat them in the quest for commercial expansion. Brewster has just introduced the Commercial Airline Bill, which will give world expansion solely to Pan Am. Trippe advises Brewster to check to the "disquieting rumors about Mr. Hughes."
Hepburn takes Hughes to meet her family in Connecticut, which turns into a disaster. When, over lunch, her mother, considering herself a socialist, tells him that "we don't care about money," he shoots back, "That's because you've always had it," in effect exposing the Hepburns as snobs and hypocrites. Back on the set of her new film, Katharine finds herself confiding about her escalating difficulties with Howard to Spencer Tracy. She finally tells Hughes she has fallen in love and is leaving him. Howard responds by burning all his clothes that night. [[Image:Aviator1dd.jpg|thumb|left|Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner]] He soon has a new interest: 15-year old Faith Domergue. He also fights the Motion Picture Association of America over the steamy scenes in The Outlaw. He learns of Pan Am's efforts to run TWA off the map. He secures contracts with the Army on two projects, a spy plane and a troop plane, by throwing a massive dinner party. He is hounded by the press after being caught with Ava Gardner by an enraged Domergue, who rams her car into theirs. Hughes meets with a shady tabloid editor to purchase the photo negatives taken of Hepburn with Tracy before they become public. [[Image:Hugheswse.jpg|thumb|right|Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes]] By 1946, Hughes has only finished the XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft and is building the H-4 Hercules ("Spruce Goose") flying boat. The budget is increasing, the deadline is looming, and Hughes starts to show signs of alarming behavior, such as worry over dust and germs in the air and repeating phrases over and over. That July, he takes the XF-11 for a test flight. One of the propellers malfunctions, causing severe power and control problems; Hughes attempts to land it on a golf course in Beverly Hills, but crashes into a neighborhood. He is rushed to the hospital, where he slowly recuperates. He learns the Spruce Goose is no longer needed by the Army, but orders production to continue. When he is discharged, the whole TWA fleet is built and ready to go, but he is in danger of being bankrupted by the airline and the plane.
Afraid of the media trying to find him, Hughes places microphones and taps Ava's phone lines to keep track of any suspicious activity. After being confronted by Gardner, he returns home to find the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) searching his house for incriminating evidence of him embezzling government funds. The incident is both a powerful trauma for Hughes and gives his enemies knowledge about his condition. Hughes meets with Brewster, who offers to drop the charges if Hughes supports the CAB Bill and sells the TWA stock to Trippe.
During the meeting Brewster carefully and deliberately does things to inflame Hughes's OCD. Hughes defiantly refuses but sinks into a deep depression afterwards, shutting himself in his screening room, terrified of germs, urinating into dozens of empty milk bottles, with his OCD growing exponentially worse. Hepburn visits him, talking to him from outside the door, and thanks him for buying the negatives and apologizes for how wrong things went with them. She begs Hughes to let her help him, to either let her in or open the door and come out, but he does neither. Trippe then pays Hughes a visit, but an enraged Hughes vows he will never sell TWA to Trippe. Trippe warns Dietrich that the world will see what Howard has become if he goes to the Hearings. After nearly three months, Hughes finally emerges and prepares to face the Senate, with encouragement from Ava Gardner, who forces him to get cleaned up. When he thanks her, she tells Hughes "You would do it for me".
Hughes arrives at the Hearings, and starts off with counter-claiming Brewster's charges. Humiliated and enraged by this turn of events, the Senator formally states that Hughes charged the Defense Department $56 million USD for planes that never flew. Then, Hughes states that other companies did not deliver planes either, yet they have not been charged with embezzlement. He also shows that he himself poured millions of dollars into the planes, losing money in the process. In a final blow to Brewster and Trippe's Pan Am monopoly scheme, Hughes exposes their offer to drop the charges, if he sold his stock over to Trippe and Pan Am, and he adds that on their little date, Brewster told him this would never take place, if he would just give up, and also exposes the longstanding ties and bribes between Brewster and Trippe. thumb|left|The "Spruce Goose" Hughes successfully rebuts the charges, the CAB bill is defeated, Trippe's plan for Pan Am's global expansion is ruined, and TWA starts to expand to Europe and the Far East. Hughes then proves he was right about the Spruce Goose by personally flying it himself. After the flight, he talks to Noah and Odie about a new jet-liner for TWA and makes a date with Ava at the party to celebrate.
Hughes seems to be free of his inner demons, until he suddenly sees three businessmen in suits and white gloves who seem to be menacing him. They might be figments of his imagination but Dietrich's reaction implies that they are real; after Hughes asks if the businessmen work for him, he responds "Everybody works for you Howard." This suddenly sets him into an obsessive-compulsive fit, constantly repeating "The way of the future" in reference to the jet aircraft the three men had been discussing.
Dietrich and Odie hide Hughes in a bathroom and keep him there while they can get a doctor. Howard has a flashback of his boyhood self, being washed by mother and making the promise to fly the fastest aircraft ever built, make the biggest movies ever and become the richest man in the world. Realizing that although he has nearly accomplished these goals, he is not happy for having done so. The darkness surrounds him, and he knows that madness is inevitable. As the film ends, he keeps muttering "the way of the future... the way of the future", emphasizing the link between his business genius and his mental illness.
[edit] Cast
As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):[2]
A full cast and production crew list is too lengthy to include, see: IMDb profile.[2]]
[edit] Production
Principal photography took place at multiple locations including studio work at Los Angeles Center Studios and Showbiz Studios, Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles exterior locales included the Pantages Theater, Southwestern Law School and Woodland Hills Golf Course. Nearby Long Beach sites included the jetty at the pier and the RMS Queen Mary (for interiors). Other sites included San Bernardino International Airport, Santa Clarita and Ventura, California as well as sets in Montréal and Saint-Hubert, Québec, Canada. teriors)
[edit] Style
thumb|right|Hughes crashes in a field; screenshot showing the two-color film emulation used in scenes depicting events before 1935. For the first fifty minutes of the film, scenes appear in shades of only red and cyan blue; green objects are rendered as blue. This was done, according to Scorsese, to emulate the look of early two-color movies, in particular the Multicolor process, which Hughes himself owned. Many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of three-strip Technicolor. Other scenes were stock footage colorized and incorporated into the film. The color effects were created by Legend Films.
[edit] Distribution
The film had several distributors worldwide. For example, it was distributed in the U.S. (theatrical), UK, and Germany by Miramax Films, and in Latin America, Australia, and on U.S. DVD by Warner Bros. Pictures.
[edit] Reception
The film received highly positive reviews with the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 180 out of the 203 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 89% and certification of fresh.[3] The film grossed $102M at the U.S. box office and $111M at the foreign box office. Film critic Roger Ebert, described the film and its subject Howard Hughes in these terms:
| “ | What a sad man. What brief glory. What an enthralling film, 166 minutes, and it races past. There's a match here between Scorsese and his subject, perhaps because the director's own life journey allows him to see Howard Hughes with insight, sympathy -- and, up to a point, with admiration. This is one of the year's best films. | ” |
[edit] Box office
| USA | US$ 102,610,330 (48.0%) |
| Other | US$ 111,131,129 (52.0%) |
| World | US$ 213,741,459 |
[edit] Awards
| Academy Awards record | |
|---|---|
| 1. Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett) | |
| 2. Editing | |
| 3. Cinematography | |
| 4. Art Direction | |
| 5. Costume Design | |
| Golden Globe Awards record | |
| 1. Picture - Drama | |
| 2. Drama Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) | |
| 3. Original Score | |
| BAFTA Awards record | |
| 1. Picture | |
| 2. Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett) | |
| 3. Production Design | |
| 4. Make-up/Hair | |
The Aviator was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and won 5, including Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett. It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Official site
- The Aviator at the Internet Movie Database
- The Aviator at Rotten Tomatoes
- High Life by Robert Richardson, ASC.
- Leonardo DiCaprio interview for The Aviator
| Preceded by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King |
Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama 2005 |
Succeeded by Brokeback Mountain |
| Preceded by The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King |
BAFTA Award for Best Film 2005 |
Succeeded by Brokeback Mountain |
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!Category:2004 films !Category:Aviation films !Category:Best Drama Picture Golden Globe !Category:Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winning performance !Category:Films featuring a Best Drama Actor Golden Globe winning performance !Category:Biographical films !Category:Drama films !Category:English-language films !Category:Films directed by Martin Scorsese !Category:Films shot in Super 35 Aviator Aviator !Category:Films set in the 1920s !Category:Films set in the 1930s !Category:Films set in the 1940s !Category:Warner Bros. films !Category:Films about filmmaking
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