SnoopyStyle In 1916, Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) is a German soldier fighting in the trenches on the western front. He is awed by the fighting machines. In 1918, he's a new pilot brought up to the front. His lower class status clash with the aristocratic nature of flying. All he cares about is to get enough kills to claim the highest medal for valor, the Blue Max. He has no use for chivalry. Willi von Klugermann (Jeremy Kemp) is the popular ace of the group. Willi's uncle General Count von Klugermann (James Mason) arrives to present the Blue Max to him and sees Bruno as a good propaganda tool while his wife Countess Kaeti von Klugermann (Ursula Andress) starts an affair with Bruno.Peppard is a little wooden but that's what I like about his performance. He's cold-blooded about war. He's ambitious and driven. He's not likable and there's no pretense to like him. There is no pretense to like this war especially since it is the German side. There is some big action with good aerial combat. The cockpit footage with projected background is combined with pre-CGI stunt flying to produce good thrilling action. This is a cold-hearted affair and I appreciate it on that level.

elcoat I cannot stand churlish, amateur critics, and we have some here attempting to review this wonderful film, The Blue Max.The protagonist of the film, Bruno Stachel, is indeed a sympathetic character. The film starts with him in a mud hole in a World War 1 No Man's Land surrounded by the dead, including newly killed comrades. Then he hears something in the heavens and looks up ... with wonder and a birth of hope ... to Jerry Goldsmith's beautiful music ... to see an aerial dogfight.Stachel is lower class in monarchist, class-conscious Imperial Germany. He reappears as a new, barely trained pilot and is ridiculed upon his arrival by his aristocratic squadron mates for his father being a hotel clerk ... but Stachel is not at all intimidated. His squadron commander sees something special - specially lethal? - in him, as does the reigning squadron ace Willi Vogelmann.Stachel readily takes to the aerial hunt, although seems indifferent to the death of the experienced pilot who accompanies him on his first mission, which is successful. Seeing talent, Vogelmann decides to mentor this young cobra.As others have noted, the flying and dogfighting scenes are incredible. I read at the time that a Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte - German World War 1 flying service - veteran aloft in the camera plane got so excited he seemed to think it was real.At a reception after Vogelmann's award of The Blue Max - Pour le Merite - medal ... Germany's highest ... by Willi's uncle *General* Vogelmann ... Stachel sees the general's very young trophy wife ... dazzlingly and very Germanly played by Ursula Andress, no less ... who doubles as Willi's mistress with aristocratic hedonism.I might interject that I know someone whose mother came from German-Switzerland like Ursula and had exactly Ursula's beauty ... as well as many children, happily.Stachel thus sets himself a twin goal: to get The Blue Max like Willi has and to get/steal the favors - lust - of the general's wife from Willi.(Trying to post a quotation on IMDb is an exercise in frustrating impossibility!)The real, crucial quote of the film is after Stachel shoots down - in full view of everyone on his base - a plane whose pilot has surrendered but whose badly wounded rear gunner revives and starts aiming his machine gun at Stachel ... which those on the ground cannot see.Once landed, Stachel is angrily confronted by the base commander and fellow pilots for what they think is cold-blooded murder. Feeling falsely and cruelly charged, Stachel "turns," going back to the crashed British plane, cutting out its serial number from the fuselage fabric, throwing that at his commander's feet, and saying "Confirmed! It's a cruel world, Herr Hauptmann. You said so yourself!" And Stachel then stalks off past his apoplectic commander, and things get more savage after that. Although!, after Stachel returns from a leave in Berlin, he seems to kindly reassure his commander that his wife is well ... that Stachel hasn't seduced *her* too! Thus, unlike a couple others in the film, he is *not* a monster and indeed has a later qualm of conscience that leads to his undoing.Each of the actors was well-chosen for their parts. Fair-haired George Peppard played Stachel masterfully. James Mason showed how ruthless and evil an elite can be. Ursula vividly and passionately portrays a hot, beautiful, and selfish young countess, utterly shattered at the end by the consequence of what she has done.And in contrast to the book by its title, the end of the film was indeed climactic finality.I cannot praise this film enough. Everyone should see it.

Patrick R. Pearsey "The Blue Max" is one of my favorite war movies. Filmed in Ireland, it is the story of a German private named Bruno Stachel, in World War I who dreams of getting out of the trenches and into the German air force. This he accomplishes. The central character is played by George Peppard, who in my opinion was at the height of his career at this time.Bruno Stachel is very ambitious, with an overriding desire to earn the Blue Max, Germany's top air medal, given to a pilot with 20 "kills". During the film Bruno Stachel finds a rival("in or out of bed") in fellow pilot Willi von Klugermann (Jeremy Kemp). Their common love interest is Countess Klugermann (Ursula Andress), who is married to Willi's uncle General Count von Klugermann (James Mason)."The Blue Max" is famous for its air combat scenes. Another memorable scene was the stunt duel between Peppard and Kemp's characters flying under an aqueduct. "The Blue Max" was based on a novel of the same name by Jack D. Hunter and one of a trilogy, the others being "The Blood Order" and "The Tin Cravat", following Bruno Stachel into the 1930's Nazi regime. I think those would be interesting to see on film. This film has a fantastic soundtrack composed by Jerry Goldsmith.

BigBobFoonman This is a magnificently done, beautifully photographed historical piece that debunks the romantic Knights of the Air ballyhoo that has been so common in any movie about WWI. The main character, Bruno Stachel, a fictional German Ace, is shown as an infantry soldier in the blood, mud and mire of ground combat. He stares up at the sky at the graceful biplane fighters killing each other, and figures that even dying in a burning airplane was better that the trenches.The movie jumps ahead to his joining a squadron and seeing just how different their war in the air was from what he had experienced on the ground. There was a gentleman's chivalry applied to the combat---the enemy was honored, sometimes shown mercy, and George Peppard's Bruno did not buy any of that. He saw his job as shooting down enemy aircraft and killing the pilots and gunners. That, of course, is exactly what the truth of the air war was---the gentlemen, often from aristocratic German and Austrian families, played a mind game among themselves that they were Knights....above the fray, yet all important to the war effort.Bruno did things like shoot the slats out of a British two-seater, kill the back facing gunner and while the plane was barely flying with a wounded pilot, directed the pilot to fly back to the German airbase. Thinking he was going to be allowed to land, and have his wounds dressed as a prisoner, the Brit pilot flies over the airfield where Bruno promptly machine guns the cockpit of the British plane, sending it diving into a fiery crash in front of Bruno's contemporaries. This done, because of a kill he was denied in an earlier mission because no one else saw it happen.The commanding officer dressed him down severely, and Bruno lashed back telling the aristocrat that his job was to kill British pilots and planes. Bruno became an embarrassment, and an ace. He wins the coveted Blue Max medal, and is "dealt with" later by the German Air Command with the help of Ursula Andress, who was very good in her role.This is a dark story, beautifully filmed---the aircraft all actual replicas and still-flying originals from that war. Special effects are top-notch for the time, and set decoration dead on.The redoubtable Karl-Michael Vogler and James Mason round out a great cast. This film has the look and feel of an epic, and it is.