The Aviator

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 Alan Alda Alec Baldwin Kate Beckinsale John C. Reilly
Music by	Howard Shore
Cinematography	Robert Richardson
Editing by	Thelma Schoonmaker
Studio	Forward Pass Appian Way Intermedia Initial Entertainment Group Warner Bros. Pictures Miramax Films Cappa Productions
Distributed by	Warner Bros. Miramax Films Initial Entertainment Group
Release date(s)	December 25, 2004 (2004-12-25)
Running time	169 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$110 million[1]
Gross revenue	$213,741,459

The Aviator is a 2004 American biographical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The film, which centers on the life of aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, draws largely upon a biography by Charles Higham.^[2] The film centers on Hughes' life from the late 1920s to 1947, during which time he became a successful film producer and an aviation magnate while simultaneously growing more unstable due to severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. The film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, winning five.

Plot

The film begins in 1914 with 9-year-old Hughes being bathed by his mother, who warns him of disease: "You are not safe."

The film then shows him in 1927, at 22 years old preparing to direct Hell's Angels. Hiring Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) to run Hughes Tool Company, while he oversees the flight sequences for the film, Hughes becomes obsessed with shooting the film realistically, even re-shooting a dogfight scene himself. By 1929, with the film finally complete, Hughes realizes the premiere of The Jazz Singer, which was the first part-talking film, meaning that sound films would soon become the industry standard. Hughes re-shoots Hell's Angels with sound, costing another year and $1.7 million. Hell's Angels released as a sound film in 1930 is a huge hit, and Hughes also produces Scarface (1932) and The Outlaw (1943). However, there is one goal he relentlessly pursues: aviation. During this time, he also pursues Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett). 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 supporter and confidant to Hughes, and helps alleviate the symptoms of his obsessive-compulsive disorder. As Hughes' fame grows, he is seen with more starlets.

Hughes 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 but 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 (Alec Baldwin), chairman of the board of Pan American Airlines, and Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) 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 into the "disquieting rumors about Mr. Hughes."

Hepburn and Hughes eventually break up when she announces that she has fallen in love with her co-star (implied to be her would-be domestic partner Spencer Tracy).

He soon has a new interest: 15-year old Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner) and later, Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale). He also fights the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association over the steamy scenes in The Outlaw. He learns of Pan Am's efforts to run TWA off the map yet secures contracts with the Army Air Forces on two projects, a spy plane and a troop transport. By 1946, Hughes has only finished the XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft and is building the H-4 Hercules ("Spruce Goose") flying boat.

With the strain of meeting deadlines and budgets, Hughes' sanity begins to deteriorate, repeating phrases over and over and exhibiting a phobia over dust and germs. That July, he takes the XF-11 for a test flight. One of the propellers malfunctions, causing a crash in a Beverly Hills neighborhood. Rushed to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, he slowly recuperates and learns the H-4 Hercules transport is no longer needed, 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 his "flying boat".

He grows increasingly paranoid, placing microphones all over his house and tapping Gardner's phone lines to keep track of any suspicious activity. After being confronted by Gardner, he returns home to find the FBI searching his house for incriminating evidence that he embezzled 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 and sells the TWA stock to Trippe. Hughes sinks into a deep depression afterwards, shutting himself in his screening room, growing ever more paranoid and detached from reality; terrified of germs, he urinates into dozens of empty milk bottles. Hepburn tries to visit him, but is unable to help. Trippe then pays Hughes a visit, but an enraged Hughes vows he will never sell TWA. Trippe warns Dietrich that the world will see what Hughes 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 helps him get cleaned up.

A reinvigorated Hughes arrives at the hearings, and starts off with counter-claiming Brewster's charges: "Why not tell the truth, Senator? Why not tell the truth that this investigation was really born on the day that TWA first decided to fly to Europe?" In retaliation, Brewster formally states that Hughes charged the Defense Department $56 million for aircraft that never flew. Hughes defends himself and reveals that Trippe essentially bribed Brewster to hold the hearings, ending Trippe's quest to monopolize the flight industry.

Hughes successfully test flies the flying boat himself. After the flight, he talks to Dietrich and his mechanic, Glenn Odekirk (Matt Ross), about a new jetliner for TWA (the Avro C102 Jetliner) and makes a date with Gardner at a celebration party on the Long Beach shoreline. Hughes seems free of his inner demons until he sees three attendants in business suits and white gloves edging towards him, which triggers an obsessive-compulsive fit as he begins repeating "The way of the future." Dietrich and Odekirk take Hughes in a bathroom and hide him there, while Dietrich fetches a doctor and Odekirk stands outside guarding the door. Alone inside, Hughes has a flashback to his boyhood, being washed by his mother and resolving he will fly the fastest aircraft ever built, make the biggest movies ever and become the richest man in the world. As the film ends he repeatedly mutters "the way of the future... the way of the future" into a darkened mirror.

The H-4 hercules "Spruce Goose" transport

Cast

As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):^[3]

• Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes
• Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn
• Kevin O'Rourke as Spencer Tracy
• John C. Reilly as Noah Dietrich
• Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner
• Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe
• Alan Alda as Senator Owen Brewster
• Ian Holm as Professor Fitz
• Danny Huston as Jack Frye
• Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow
• Jude Law as Errol Flynn
• Adam Scott as Johnny Meyer
• Matt Ross as Glen "Odie" Odekirk
• Kelli Garner as Faith Domergue
• Frances Conroy as Katharine Houghton
• Brent Spiner as Robert E. Gross
• Stanley DeSantis as Louis B. Mayer
• Edward Herrmann as Joseph Breen
• Willem Dafoe as Roland Sweet
• J.C. MacKenzie as Ludlow Ogden Smith
• Josie Maran as cigarette girl
• Jane Lynch as Amelia Earhart (scenes deleted from final cut)

Production

Style

Hughes crashes in a field; screenshot showing the simulated bipack color film used in scenes depicting events before 1935.

For the first 50 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 bipack color movies, in particular the Multicolor process, which Hughes himself owned, emulating the available technology of the era. Similarly, 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.

Movie models

In Aviator, scale models were used to duplicate many of the flying scenes. When Martin Scorsese began planning his aviation epic, a decision was made to film flying sequences with scale models rather than CGI special effects. The critical reaction to the CGI models in Pearl Harbor (2001) had been a crucial factor in Scorsese's decision to use full-scale static and scale models in this case. The building and filming of the flying models proved both cost-effective and timely.^[4]

The primary scale models were the Spruce Goose and the F-11; both miniatures were designed and fabricated over a period of several months by New Deal Studios.^[5] The 375 lb (170 kg) Spruce Goose model had a wingspan of 20 ft (6.1 m) while the 750 lb (340 kg) XF-11 had a 25 ft (7.6 m) wingspan. Each was built as a motion control miniature used for "beauty shots" of the model taking off and in flight as well as in dry dock and under construction at the miniature Hughes Hangar built as well by New Deal Studios. The XF-11 was reverse engineered from photographs and some rare drawings and then modeled in Rhinoceros 3D by the New Deal art department. These 3D models of the Spruce Goose as well as the XF-11 were then used for patterns and construction drawings for the model makers. In addition to the aircraft, the homes that the XF-11 crashes into were fabricated at 1:4 scale to match the 1:4 scale XF-11. The model was rigged to be crashed and break up several times for different shots.

Additional castings of the Spruce Goose flying boat and XF-11 models were provided for new radio controlled flying versions assembled by the team of model builders from Aero Telemetry.^[6] The Aero Telemetry team was given only three months to complete three models including the 450 lb H-1 Racer, with an 18 ft (5.5 m) wingspan, that had to stand-in for the full scale replica that was destroyed in a crash, shortly before principal photography began.^[7]

The models were shot on location at Long Beach and other California sites from helicopter or raft platforms.^[4] The short but much heralded flight of Hughes’ HK-1 Hercules on 2 November 1947 was realistically recreated in the Port of Long Beach. The motion control Spruce Goose and Hughes Hangar miniatures built by New Deal Studios are presently on display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, with the original Hughes HK-1 "Spruce Goose".

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.

20th Century Fox held Spanish rights.

Reception

The film received highly positive reviews with the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 180 out of the 203 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 88% and certification of freshness.^[8] At another review aggregator site Metacritic, the film scored a 77 average out of 100, based on 41 reviews.^[9] The film grossed $102 million at the U.S. box office and $111 million at the foreign box office. Film critic Roger Ebert described the film and its subject, Howard Hughes, in these terms:^[10]

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.

Box office

Home media

The film was released in DVD in a two-disc-set in widescreen and full screen versions. The first disc includes commentary with director Martin Scorsese. The second disc includes "The Making of The Aviator," "Deleted Scenes" as well as 11 other special features.

The film was later released in High Definition on Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD on November 6, 2007.

Awards

The Aviator was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and won five, including Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett. It also won the BAFTA Award for Best Film.

See also

• The Aviator soundtrack
• Mental illness in film

References

Notes

Bibliography

External links

• Official site
• Aero Telemetry
• The Aviator at the Internet Movie Database
• The Aviator at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Aviator at Box Office Mojo
• The Aviator at Metacritic
• The Aviator at Allmovie
• High Life by Robert Richardson, ASC.
• Leonardo DiCaprio interview for The Aviator
• The Aviator VFX