The Blue Max

Release Date: January 21, 1966

Watch Date: January 6 – January 12, 2025

“The ‘Blue Max’, a coveted medal for achievement in flying, is ruthlessly sought by Bruno Stabel, a poor-boy German soldier who climbs out of the trenches and into the aristocratic air force. He is met with prejudice by the other contestants; wealthy snobs who look down upon his low economic stature. When he claims the title, he earns the respect of the General, and the General’s wife, who wants to repay him in ways that the General might not appreciate.”

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   Now I know, I know, that this movie is not about the Nazis. But, it feels very, very wrong to have a movie set with the main characters, the heroes if you will, being German forces – even if it’s in WWI. And maybe that says something about myself more than it does about the film, but it just feels off.

   Despite my own personal feelings about having a German Axis lead…was it the Axis in the first world war? I’m writing this too early to feel any desire to do any research on this, and my own personal fascination driven by my father’s love of war documentaries is with the second world war, not the first. This movie is actually pretty interesting.

   You won’t like any of the characters. They’re not nice people, they’re all deeply flawed and incredibly bad people. You have the man obsessed with prestige, the rich dude who is screwing his uncles wife, the rich lady who is cheating on her husband with her nephew – by marriage – and another guy, the general of the air force who is willing to sacrifice lives for propaganda for a war he knows that he’s losing. The only good character, the only relatable character, is the leader of the division, who wants to have a noble battle in the air, who wants to respect the other sides life, and who doesn’t want to chase down and shoot people just for the sport of it. But he’s not our main character.

   Our main character is obsessed with his ego, his prideful, he’s completely and utterly unlikeable. And you still have moments where he seems to be acting honorably. Where you’re kind of cheering him on. And then there are moments where he has a tantrum because he doesn’t get a downed plane counted and it’s like, okay, you’re not a great person now are you?

   This movie is well written, shot beautifully, and the stunts in the WWI era planes are pretty spectacular. The only thing I can say against it, really, is that it’s too long. We had to break it up into parts, not because we weren’t enjoying it, but because we simply had to move on and do other things with our days – like go to sleep. (A lot of our movies are watched around the kids bedtime schedule, you wouldn’t think there would be a lot of Disney movies that are inappropriate for little eyes but there’s enough that we’re uncomfortable with.) There are scenes that could probably have been cut, stunt sections that could probably have been shorter, and I don’t think we would have missed much and we still would have gotten a pretty good film out of it.

   But, it’s not a bad film, especially if you’re a world war buff, especially if you like planes, but definitely not if you’re looking for a hero or if you’re even slightly uncomfortable with occassionally rooting for the other side.