Les Jones

A&E > Movie: The Aviator

I can't imagine anyone not liking the Howard Hughes bio The Aviator. There's the Hollywood angle - the movies, the starlets, the battles with the censorship board. There's the industrial angle - the struggles to maintain financial viability in the face of Hughes' seat-of-the-pants management style, the rivalry with PanAm, and the Senate hearings. Then there's the love story and the airplanes, which the movie nicely intertwines, combined with his inevitable deterioration into insanity. (Hughes had acute obsessive-compulsive disorder, possibly caused by late-stage syphilis.)

The movie is visually stunning. There are easily a dozen scenes I can recall. Hughes discovering Jean Harlow in the Coconut Grove, the airspeed test of the H-1, the Hell's Angels screenings, meeting Kate Hepburn, the Senate hearings, the censor board on The Outlaw, visiting the Hepburn family in Connecticut, Hughes burning his clothes in the courtyard, the crash of the XF-11 in Beverly Hills, the breakup scene with Kate Hepburn, Hughes' Kleenex-covered house, the test run of the Spruce Goose.

Cate Blanchett's turn as Kathryn Hepburn is huge. She's sure to get an Oscar nomination.

Leonardo DiCaprio is very good as Howard Hughes. One thing that distracted me is that his crackling voice reminded me of the Schofield Kid (Jaimz Woolvett) in Unforgiven.

Martin Scorsese directed the movie, and Michael Mann produced. Scorsese is a Hollywood legend, but Mann is an unsung hero who knows how to film movies about strong-willed characters. It's a toss-up as to which one of them deserves more credit.

- Plane and Pilot magazine on Howard Hughes via Philip Greenspun
- Howard Hughes biography on Wikipedia