Films about the First World War are rarer than films about the Second. Most Second World War films, with a few exceptions such as the anti-war satire "Catch-22", are adventure films on the patriotic theme of how the Allies fought the good fight against the Nazis. There are few such films about the earlier conflict; it is difficult to make a patriotic adventure film about trench warfare. "Zeppelin" could have been an exception if it had concentrated on the real-life struggle between German airship crews and British pilots, but instead concocted an implausible fictitious plot and never decided whether it was a pro-British film or a pacifist one. "On Moonlight Bay" has a decidedly jingoistic approach to the events of 1917/18, but wisely does not show any of the actual fighting.
Most First World War films, such as "Paths of Glory", the two versions of "A Farewell to Arms" or "Oh! What a Lovely War!" have an anti-war theme and concentrate on the Allied viewpoint. "The Blue Max", however, is unusual in that it shows us the war from a German viewpoint. Moreover, the Germans, with one exception, are portrayed relatively sympathetically.
That exception is Bruno Stachel, an ambitious young lieutenant with the German Air Force. Stachel's ambition is to win fame and glory for himself by shooting down as many enemy aircraft as possible and, if possible, win the coveted "Blue Max", a decoration given to pilots who have made at least twenty "kills". His only loyalty is to himself, not to his country or his comrades (he is not above claiming other men's victories as his own), and he soon makes enemies within his squadron, especially another pilot, Lieutenant Wilhelm von Klugemann and his commanding officer, Captain Otto Heinemann. The aristocratic Klugemann resents Stachel on account of his working-class origins, the fact that he has risen from the ranks and the fact that the two are rivals for the position of the squadron's leading ace. The patriotic and chivalrous Heinemann regards Stachel as both dishonourable and insubordinate. Heinemann threatens to have Stachel court-martialled after one incident when he disregards an order not to engage British warplanes in combat, but the young lieutenant is protected by his relationship with General Count von Klugemann, Wilhelm's uncle. The General is attempting, for propaganda purposes, to build Stachel into a national working-class hero with whom the German masses can identify. (Most German air aces, such as von Richthofen, were aristocrats).
The one weakness of the film is the sub-plot involving the General's beautiful young wife, Kaeti, who is sexually involved with both Stachel and her nephew-by-marriage. The rivalry between Wilhelm and Stachel is sexual as well as professional; each wants to be the better lover as well as the better pilot. Unfortunately, Ursula Andress is unconvincing as Kaeti. It is not merely that she gives a wooden performance; the main drawback is that she always seems too modern. I could never accept her as a woman of the 1910s; she came across as a swinging sixties chick who had somehow stepped fifty years back into the past. George Peppard is adequate but not outstanding as Stachel, but with those two exceptions most of the acting is very good, especially from James Mason as the General.
Given that the German officer class were obsessed with matters of honour, the General's complacency about his wife's infidelity with two junior officers under his command seems surprising. It can, however, be explained as part of von Klugemann's tendency to subordinate questions of honour to what he perceives to be the national interest. This tendency brings him into conflict with Heinemann, for whom honour and chivalry are all; better that Germany should be defeated than that she should be victorious through dishonourable means. Both men are partly in the right; von Klugemann understands political realities far better than does Heinemann, who is attempting to fight a twentieth-century war according to eighteenth-century values. From a post-1945 viewpoint, however, we can see that if Heinemann's values had prevailed in Germany the world would have been spared the horrors of the Nazi regime and the Second World War. (Heinemann has no "von" in his name, which suggests that he is not an aristocrat but a bourgeois who has adopted the aristocratic code of chivalry just as the aristocracy are abandoning it. Names are important in this film; "Klugemann" translates as "clever man", "Stachel" in German suggests a prickly, thorny character, "Heinemann" recalls the liberal German poet Heine).
Unlike some British or American interpretations of the period, no attempt is made to depict Wilhelmine Germany as a dress-rehearsal for the Third Reich. None of the main characters we see are proto-Nazis. Heinemann would have loathed the Nazis for their brutality. Klugemann would have despised them as upstarts. Stachel, had he survived the war, might have joined the Party out of self-interest, but never out of conviction, because loyalty to anything other than himself is alien to his nature.
The scenes of aerial combat are superb, although the print that was shown on British television was very dark, at times suggesting that the Luftwaffe were pioneering night flying as early as 1918. In the main, however, this is not an adventure film, but an interesting and unusual examination of the ethics of war. 7/10
A Goof. When Stachel is receiving his medal the band play the Austrian Imperial Hymn which was not adopted as the German national anthem until after the war, under the title "Deutschland ueber Alles". A similar goof occurs in another film, "55 Days at Peking". This may, however, have been deliberate. The anthem of Wilhelmine Germany, "Heil Dir I'm Siegerkranz", was sung to the same tune as "God Save the Queen". A sixties audience would doubtless have found it odd to hear a German band playing an anthem today exclusively associated with Britain.
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