The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorcese, is a biopic about arrogant multimillionaire Howard R. Hughes, Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio, whose characterization seems that of a boy playing a man's part). The film begins when Hughes is a child in Houston, where a fatal contagious disease is rampant; he is bathed by a doting mother, who apparently explains that he is quarantined. When Hughes is later under stress, there is a flashback to the same scene, which evidently is responsible for a fear of germs. Next, the scene shifts to a twenty-two-year-old Hughes who is spending inherited millions from his father's oil wildcatting and Hughes Tool Company, an oil-field equipment firm, on three types of projects. The first project is to produce films, the fourth of which is Hell's Angels (completed in 1930), featuring a World War II air battle. (His uncle Rupert was a screenwriter.) The second project, also based on his knowledge of aeronautical engineering, is to build new types of airplanes. The third project is to court women, who appear before him as he makes the film in the daytime and fraternizes with movie people in Hollywood nightclubs. What becomes clear is that Hughes will devote himself fully to accomplishing goals that may seem impossible to others, even mortgaging all his assets to finish the first two types of projects. Hell's Angels, then the most expensive film ever made (at $3.8 million), is first shot as a silent film but later dubbed as a talkie; Hughes realizes at the end of production of the silent version that the public wants talkies and will no longer see a silent film. Next, he overcomes the censorship board to enable a release of Jane Russell's cleavage in The Outlaw (1943). (Although he starts as an independent filmmaker, from 1948-1955 he owns RKO Pictures Corporation, and he produced twenty-six films from 1926-1957, directing only Hell's Angels and The Outlaw.) His airplane concepts include new designs, including faster planes, cargo planes, and the world's largest plane, the seaplane known as The Spruce Goose. His love to fly sends him aloft to break speed records but also crash landings, one of which leaves him permanently scarred. He founds Hughes Aircraft in 1932 and later acquires controlling interest in Trans World Airlines (TWA); he also garners large government contracts for airplanes to fight World War II. Since TWA challenges industry pioneer Pan American Airlines (Pan Am) CEO Juan Trippe (played by Alec Baldwin), who has lobbying connections that include Senator Owen Brewster (played by Alan Alda), Hughes must fight to oppose proposed legislation to make Pan Am a legal monopoly as America's sole international carrier. Hughes's testimony before Congress in 1947, a high point of the film, ultimately demolishes Brewster, scuttles the bill, and transforms TWA from insolvency into a commercial success. The third project begins with an assortment of starlets but ultimately focuses on feisty Katherine Hepburn (played by Cate Blanchett), daughter of a Connecticut millionaire, who in time dumps him for Spencer Tracy due to his involvement in other projects. (He had only two wives, Ella Rice and Jean Peters, both divorced.) Toward the end of the film, as pressures build, Hughes is afflicted with psychosomatisms, and the story ends surrealistically--with the presumption that he has gone mad. Indeed, he became a recluse, suffering from social anxiety, and died in 1976 at the age of seventy, leaving an estate of $2 billion. The film does not deal with Hughes's CIA connections and his support for Richard Nixon; that is a subject for another film, possibly starring a more appropriate Robert De Niro. MH
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