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Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

I kind of enjoyed this, despite the stagy performances at the beginning, the ligneous leading man, and the period visual effects. It was written by Spig Wead, the protagonist of John Ford's "The Wings of Eagles", and directed by Frank Capra before he became warm and populist. Fay Wray is a cute and unwittingly sexy as she was in the same year's "King Kong," even if she does keep her dress on this time around.Ralph Graves is a hot-shot aviator in the 1932 US Navy. You ought to see him do outside loops and laughing at orders not to do it. Jack Holt is his superior officer who is committed to the giant dirigibles that fly out of the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Graves is married to Fay Wray, whom Holt loves from afar, in a gentlemanly kind of way. Graves doesn't take Wray seriously when she complains that he's more interested in headlines and aviation trophies than he is in her. He placates her with lines like, "Say, honey, you must know nothing means more to me than you." He thinks he's smart but he's pretty dumb.Graves is chosen to pilot a flight over the South Pole and dropping a flag on it. He decides to land the airplane and plant the flag in person, the happy-go-lucky lug. Well -- maybe not so lucky. He cracks the plane up. Two of the four-man crew wind up dead. And Graves carries the third guy until he collapses from exhaustion, hunger, and cold, abjectly accepting death. But before they can snuff it, the two men are rescued by a dirigible flown by Holt.The first part is a little goofy. The actors speak as if they're on a stage and have to shout to reach the balconies. But the last two thirds of the film are packed with action scenes, and fairly convincing, considering the year. The suffering undergone by the crash survivors isn't stiff-upper-lip stuff either. Roscoe Karns is a wisecracking radioman on the crew. Usually these characters survive and sometimes they're given the final witticism as the film closes on the lovers kissing. But when his foot is injured and he's being hauled along on a sled, he breaks down and shouts with pain, squealing, "I don't want to cry! I don't want to cry!" It's a little horrifying. It's done with such artlessness that it's believable, and the cure turns out to be worse than the disease.It's a commercial enterprise, not a masterpiece. Capra uses some stunning shots from high up in the rafters of the dirigible hangars but aside from that it's a straightforward and somewhat familiar adventure story. It will likely sweep you along by sheer momentum after you're through the initial exposition. Interesting to note that even in 1932 radio operators used speed keys.

Dirigible was the last film that Frank Capra made with Jack Holt and Ralph Graves about the armed services. In this last one the two of them are more like James Cagney and Pat O'Brien than ever. Dirigible also resembles as the other two Graves/Holt films a film that John Ford was more likely to direct.Again the two men clash over a woman, this time Fay Wray who is married to Graves, but who is being driven nuts by Graves's irresponsibility as a flier. Give me one of those lighter than air guys instead and good friend Holt fills the bill.The film echoes the headlines of the time with the country watching the exploits of Admiral Richard E. Byrd and his polar expeditions. Both Holt and Graves go to the South Pole and each has to rescue the other at times. There is a very poignant performance by Roscoe Karns who usually played fast talking annoying characters who were entertaining, but hardly endearing. Karns plays a frostbitten marine who is truly suffering and you really feel for what he's going through.The film was shot according to the Citadel Film series book on the Films of Frank Capra at a dirigible training facility that was eventually closed down and the land was taken by the newly built Santa Anita racetrack later in the decade. The flight sequences were done in the air, just like Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels was.It's a good action film, I wonder though if John Ford could have gotten more out of it, Dirigible is definitely more his kind of film.

Very similar to a film called the Lost Zeppelin (to the point its almost a remake) that was released two years earlier this is a story of an attempt to reach the South Pole via dirigible. The story begins when the US Navy tries to get into the good graces of a polar explorer who is planning yet another trip to the pole. The navy enlists Jack Holt, a dirigible pilot, to impress the explorer in the hopes of his considering using one of their ships to make the trip. Holt seals the deal when he agrees to bring along a plane which can hook and unhook from the airship. The trip goes badly and ends in disaster. However it sets the stage for a later expedition and a shot at redemption.Spectacular large scale production this is a grand adventure, if some what slow moving tale, of pushing the envelope in the name of adventure and science. Filmed with the cooperation of the navy this film has some absolutely stunning images of planes and airships in flight. The sets are truly amazing and it's not really clear as to what's real and what's not. The look of the film will blow your mind.What is less thrilling is the soap opera between the airplane pilot and his wife, played by Fay Wray. Wray is very good as the wife who loves her husband but can't stand all of his macho antics. The scenes between the husband and the wife, and even Holt and Wray, Holt is the husbands best friend, are pure soap opera (well acted but still soap opera). I'm sure the reason the romantic scenes were inserted for the women in the audience, but the scenes kind of stop the film and diminish the rest, making the film seem much longer than its 100 minute running time.Still the film really is worth seeing. It's a grand spectacle and adventure that they don't make any more. It will knock your socks off.As to similarities with the Lost Zeppelin, you have the same goal, the clash of friends, the wife of one of the men being unhappy in her marriage, a crash needing rescue and a few similar points. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Dirigible steals from Lost Zeppelin, so much as remakes it with a few significant changes.

Aside from featuring Fay Wray BEFORE she became famous in King Kong, the movie has value as historical record, because of the scenes of the U.S. Navy's dirigible, LOS ANGELES. The LOS ANGELES served a dual role in the film, first as the fictional PENSACOLA, destroyed in a storm at sea, and then as her real self. The loss of the PENSACOLA is prescient in a way, because her successors, the very real AKRON and MACON, which had yet to enter service when the movie was made, were subsequently both lost at sea in storms, bringing an end to rigid airships in the U.S. Navy. A predecessor, the SHENANDOAH was lost in 1928 in a storm over Ohio.When this movie was made, only the LOS ANGELES was in service. The movie shows excellent closeup film of the ship mooring at Lakehurst N.J. as well as her experimental trapeze which allowed an aircraft to moor to the ship while in flight. This feature was incorporated in AKRON and MACON, along with a hanger to stow the planes aboard. These two, the biggest in USN service at 800 feet could each carry 3-4 planes. The planes could be "captured" on the trapeze, brought inside and then launched from their trapeze. An amazing sight to see!