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Gasbags and flyboys, between them is a breezy-harrowing South Pole expedition. Steered by the veteran Navy pilot (Jack Holt), the eponymous airship dazzles the crowds in brisk documentary shots until the show is stolen by the young daredevil (Ralph Graves) turning aerial cartwheels. Work versus family is the main tension, as befits a Frank "Spig" Wead story, the hotdog's wife (Fay Wray) dutifully sings along to "Anchors Aweigh" before tearfully knocking his trophies off the mantle. The triangle is complicated by the journey to Antarctica ("You might be needing some winter underwear"), the balloon is serenaded by ship whistles and saluted by Lady Liberty only to be torn apart by a storm. (Ripping fabric and twisting metal superbly score the sequence, a handheld camera seizes a flash of lightning to illuminate the panic inside the darkened control room.) "Most of the country is from Missouri as far as dirigibles are concerned," Frank Capra's adventure is a solid primer on the subject, a spectacular recreation of Robert Falcon Scott's trek, and a culmination of his early trilogy (Submarine, Flight). The mission in the ice is seen from a distance as a dark dot engulfed by white, indoors the camera tracks from one group to another in the time it takes the cook to croon "Swing Low Sweet Chariot." The Lost Horizon crash is rehearsed, the visceral trudge back has blood on the snow, howling wind, and a frenzied amputation that returns in Hitchcock's Lifeboat. (As the luckless cohort, Roscoe Karns gets a disarming gag on the edge of the gelid void, calling here-chick-chick-chick at disinterested penguins.) Blind letter and lonely parade comprise the coda, "watch your compass" is good advice for every subsequent Capra explorer. With Hobart Bosworth, Harold Goodwin, Clarence Muse, and Emmett Corrigan. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |