The Aviator Information

The Aviator is a 2004 American biographical drama film directed by Martin Scorsese, written by John Logan, produced by Graham King and Michael Mann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alan Alda, John C. Reilly and Alec Baldwin. It is the true story of aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, drawn largely upon numerous sources including a biography by Charles Higham. 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 Aviator was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director for Scorsese, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Alda, and winning five for Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction and Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett. This feat would later be duplicated by Scorsese's film Hugo seven years later.

Plot

In 1914, nine-year-old Howard Hughes is being bathed by his mother. She warns him of disease, afraid that he will succumb to a flu outbreak: "You are not safe." By 1927, Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) has inherited his family's fortune, is living in California. He hires Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) to run the Hughes Tool Company.

Following an interest in film and aviation, at the age of 22, Hughes begins directing the silent film, Hell's Angels. He becomes obsessed with shooting the film realistically and when the The Jazz Singer, the first partially talking film, premieres, he converts Hell's Angels to a sound film. As a result, it takes several years and an enormous amount of money to finish. Finally, despite press skepticism, Hell's Angels is a hit. Hughes is unsatisfied with the end result, however, and orders the film re-cut after its Hollywood premiere. He later produces Scarface (1932) and The Outlaw (1943).

Hughes becomes romantically involved with actress Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett). They live together and she helps alleviate the symptoms of his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). As Hughes' fame grows, he is linked to various starlets, inciting Hepburn's jealousy.

Hughes' greatest passion remains the same: aviation. He purchases majority interest in Transcontinental & Western Air (TWA), the predecessor to Trans World Airlines. In 1935, he test flies the H-1 Racer, pushing it to a new speed record, but crashes in a beet field; "Fastest man on the planet," he boasts to Hepburn.

Three years later, Hughes flies around the world in four days, shattering the previous record by three days. Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin), chairman of the board of rival Pan American World Airways, is determined not to let Hughes challenge his company's success. Trippe gets his crony, Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda), to introduce the Commercial Airline Bill, which would give Pan Am a monopoly on international air travel.

Hepburn and Hughes break up when she announces that she has fallen in love with fellow actor Spencer Tracy (Kevin O'Rourke). Hughes soon has new love interests: first 15-year-old Faith Domergue (Kelli Garner), then actress Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale).

Hughes secures contracts with the Army Air Forces for two projects: a spy aircraft and a huge troop transport designed to circumvent the U-boat menace. By 1946, Hughes has only finished the XF-11 reconnaissance aircraft and is still building the enormous "Spruce Goose" flying boat.

Hughes' OCD worsens, characterized by the repetition of phrases and a phobia of dust and germs. He takes the XF-11 for a test flight. One of the engines malfunctions, causing the aircraft to crash in Beverly Hills; he is severely injured and takes months to recover. Although the H-4 Hercules flying boat order is canceled, he continues development of the aircraft with his own money. When he is discharged, he is told that he has to choose between funding a floundering TWA or his flying boat. Hughes orders Dietrich to mortgage the TWA assets so he can continue developing the Hercules prototype.

Hughes grows increasingly paranoid, planting microphones and tapping Gardner's phone lines to keep track of her. His house is searched by the FBI for incriminating evidence of war profiteering. The incident creates a powerful psychological trauma for Hughes, with investigators handling his possessions and tracking dirt everywhere. Brewster privately offers to drop the charges if Hughes will sell TWA to Trippe, an offer Hughes rejects. Hughes sinks into a deep depression, shuts himself away in his screening room and grows detached from reality. Hepburn tries unsuccessfully to help him. Trippe has Brewster subpoena Hughes for a Senate investigation, confident that the reclusive Hughes will not show up.

After Hughes has shut himself away for nearly three months, Ava Gardner visits him and personally grooms and dresses him in preparation for the hearing. Reinvigorated, Hughes defends himself against Brewster's charges and accuses Trippe of essentially bribing the senator. Hughes concludes by announcing that he is committed to completing the H-4 aircraft, and that he will leave the country if he cannot get it to fly.

Hughes successfully test flies the flying boat. After the flight, he talks to Dietrich and his engineer, Glenn Odekirk (Matt Ross), about a new jetliner for TWA. He seems free of his inner demons, but relapses after seeing strange men in germ-resistant suits who may not be real. Hughes begins repeating the phrase "the way of the future" over and over again, until Dietrich and Odekirk hide him in a restroom while Dietrich fetches a doctor. Hughes has a flashback to his boyhood, being washed by his mother, and resolving he would fly the fastest aircraft ever built, make the biggest movies ever and become the richest man in the world. He continues repeating the phrase as the screen cuts to black.

Cast

• 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 Thelma the Cigarette Girl
• Jane Lynch as Amelia Earhart

Production

Style

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.

Film models

In The 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.

The primary scale models were the Spruce Goose and the XF-11; both miniatures were designed and fabricated over a period of several months by New Deal Studios. The Spruce Goose model had a wingspan of while the XF-11 had a 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. The Aero Telemetry team was given only three months to complete three models including the 450 lb H-1 Racer, with an wingspan, that had to stand-in for the full scale replica that was destroyed in a crash, shortly before principal photography began.

The models were shot on location at Long Beach and other California sites from helicopter or raft platforms. The short but much heralded flight of Hughes' HK-1 Hercules on November 2, 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 United States, United Kingdom and Germany by Miramax Films, and in Latin America, Australia, and United States DVD by Warner Bros. Pictures. 20th Century Fox held the Spanish rights.

Reception

Critical response

The film received highly positive reviews with the review tallying website Rotten Tomatoes reporting that 194 out of the 203 reviews they tallied were positive for a score of 87% and certification of "Fresh". At another review aggregator site Metacritic, the film scored a 77 average out of 100, based on 41 reviews. Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times gave the film four stars out of four and 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."

Box office performance

The Aviator was given a limited release on December 17, 2004 in 40 theaters where it grossed $858,021 on its opening weekend. It was given a wide release on December 25, 2004, and opened in 1,796 theaters in the United States, grossing $4,240,000 on its opening day and $8,631,367 on its opening weekend, ranking #4 with a per theater average of $4,805. On its second weekend, it moved up to #3 and grossed $11,364,664 " $6,327 per theater.

The Aviator grossed $102,610,330 in the United States and Canada and $111,131,129 overseas. In total, the film has grossed $213,741,459 worldwide.

Accolades

Academy Awards
1. Best Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett)
2. Best Film Editing
3. Best Cinematography
4. Best Art Direction
5. Best Costume Design
Golden Globe Awards
1. Best Motion Picture " Drama
2. Best Actor " Motion Picture Drama (Leonardo DiCaprio)
3. Best Original Score (Howard Shore)
BAFTA Awards
1. Picture
2. Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett)
3. Production Design
4. Make-up/Hair

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, editor Thelma Schoonmaker and producer Michael Mann. 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.

See also

• The Aviator (soundtrack)
• Mental illness in film