Mildly recommended for historical interest.
No, it's not a motorcycle movie; it's a 1930 film credited to Howard Hughes. I haven't seen THE AVIATOR yet, but I understand the making of this film is featured in Scorsese's piece. It came up in a conversation with friend Mike Agranoff, and I checked Netflix, et voila!
What passes for a plot involves two brothers who are students at Oxford. We have high-minded and courageous Roy (who will fight a duel on his brother's behalf, just to help him save face), and sybaritic whiner Monte (who gets to moan a lot about how he wants to live, live!).
When WWI breaks out, Roy enlists in the RFC and somehow Monte ends up in the same squadron. Roy is terribly in love with Helen, brought to the screen by Jean Harlow, the only name I recognized in a fairly large cast. It was her first film, in fact, and in the big party scene she's wearing a dress that would still seem daring today. She's no damn good, and everybody knows it except Roy.
Harlow's chest notwithstanding, the airplanes are the real stars, and we get to see lots and lots of them in many interesting variations. Some are miniatures, others are real, but in either case, they're pretty good. The burning wreckage of a dirigible falling slowly to earth looks amazingly like newsreel footage of the Hindenburg.
So while the story is unlikely to hold your interest, and the performances are broad enough for vaudeville, and the English characters all have American accents (although unusually, the Germans generally speak German, without subtitles) it's not without its moments.
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