6 / 10
Official trailer
Zeppelin is a 1971 British production that wanted to be a serious WWI espionage thriller and ended up being a competent B-movie with great model work. Étienne Périer directed it.
Michael York plays Lieutenant Geoffrey Richter-Douglas, a half-German British officer recruited to defect to the Germans so he can spy on their new super-zeppelin program. Elke Sommer plays the German scientist who develops a conscience. Marius Goring plays the obligatory German officer who’s more interesting than the script.
The plot involves a Zeppelin raid on a Scottish castle to steal the Magna Carta. None of this is based on actual events.
I have a real soft spot for this movie, and it’s almost entirely the airships. Whenever the script opens its mouth I want to get back up in the gondola, and the film is smart enough to keep taking me there.
You watch Zeppelin for the airships. You don’t watch it for the script.
The Model Work
The Zeppelin miniatures are exceptional. The film commissioned full-scale construction of zeppelin interiors and high-quality miniature models for the exterior shots. It stages the climactic raid sequence with a respect for the geometry and physics of airship operation that very few films before or since have managed. You see the gondolas.
You see the engines. You see the crew at their stations. You see the bombs being prepped. The technical detail is good enough that the film is still used occasionally as a research reference for what zeppelin operations looked like.
The decision to shoot real-scale interiors for what amounts to a B-budget production paid off. The film has a tactile sense of the airship as a working machine that no CGI version has been able to replicate. Those sequences are the reason the rating isn’t lower. I could watch the crew prepping bombs in that gondola for an hour, and I’d happily trade every scene on the ground for five more minutes of it.
For Writers
One element done with absolute commitment can save a piece of work. Zeppelin’s script is forgettable. The zeppelin sequences aren’t. The audience remembers what the audience remembers. That’s usually the part where the writer or producer cared most deeply. The lesson is to identify the part of your story that justifies the rest of it and pour your energy there. Spreading effort evenly across a mediocre work produces a mediocre work. Concentrating effort on the one part that matters can produce something memorable in spite of the surrounding weakness.
The Script Problem
The plot doesn’t survive examination. Why would the British risk a high-value double agent to learn about a single airship?
Why would the Germans send their only super-zeppelin to steal a document from a Scottish castle when they could be bombing London? Why does the scientist switch sides? The film doesn’t answer these questions. It doesn’t really ask them.
The Magna Carta plot is the dumbest part. It’s a daft idea played completely straight, and I’d have liked it more if the film had either committed to the pulp or found a mission worth the airship.
Michael York is doing his best with material that doesn’t give him anything to do.
He looks at things. He says lines. He makes choices that should be character moments but read as plot mechanisms. The role required either more or less than what he’s being asked to play, and either would have been better.
For Writers
York’s Geoffrey Richter-Douglas is the film’s biggest problem for me. He’s a position the camera follows from one set piece to the next. The script never gives him an interior life or a question he’s trying to answer, only assignments, and I kept waiting for a scene where he wanted something the story could test. It never comes.
The Aesthetic
The film looks better than it should. The Scottish exteriors, the German airfield sequences and the airship interiors add up to a coherent visual world, and I think the crew deserves more credit than anyone who worked on the script. Roy Budd’s score is workmanlike but supports the production. The result is a film that’s more pleasant to look at than to think about, and I’m fine with that for most of its running time.
This is a problem if you’re looking for substance. It’s not a problem if you accept the film for what it is, a B-picture with A-picture craftsmanship in selected areas.
For Writers
Craft separated from substance is a particular kind of trap. A piece of work can be technically accomplished and still leave the reader feeling nothing. The lesson is that craft is necessary but not sufficient. The reader can tell the difference between a beautiful sentence in a hollow story and a beautiful sentence in a story that deserves the beauty. Polish your work, then check whether the polish is supporting something or covering for the absence of something.
Craft Note
Étienne Périer directed. Michael York played Lieutenant Geoffrey Richter-Douglas. Elke Sommer played Erika Altschul. Marius Goring played Lieutenant Colonel Johann Hirsch. Released June 1971 by Warner Bros. British production with British and continental European technical crews. The Zeppelin miniatures and interior sets are the production’s standout element. Score by Roy Budd.
Is Zeppelin worth watching?
6/10. I’d watch it for the airships and put up with everything else. The miniatures and the full-scale interiors are the best zeppelin work I know of on film, and they drag a silly Magna Carta caper up to a respectable score. The script keeps it from climbing higher, and York deserved a character to play. It’s a fine Sunday afternoon film if WWI aviation hardware is your thing.
