The Battle in the Clouds

"The Battle in the Clouds" (a.k.a. "Airship Destroyer") is a really amazing film to watch. After all, even though its special effects are incredibly crude by today's standards, it was exciting stuff back in 1909 and must have really wowed audiences. In addition, much of what you see was sci-fi for the time but would be used just a few years later in WWI! Historically speaking, this is an incredible film.

During the course of the film you have no idea what the nationalities are of either side and I assume this is to increase the distribution of the film. No use offending anyone. Ironically, the version of this French film I saw bore a German title! It begins with some folks launching a blimp. It's not a Zeppelin sort of thing but looks more like a pointed sausage suspending a platform. There is no way this small balloon would provide enough lift for the guys but that's part of the charm. In fact, you see lots of blimps bouncing about--all little sausage-like things. But the main one is bad, as the crew start raining down bombs on the poor people below. Here is where it gets really creepy. Some inventors down below bring out their hardware to try to knock down the blimp--including a crude tank-like armored car, an airplane and a propeller-driven guided missile!! It's really amazing stuff and rather exciting for the day.

If you see this film and don't know that this sort of stuff predates the use of such equipment in war and you don't know how crude special effects were back in the day, then you probably won't be that impressed. However, as a retired history teacher and film nut, I was simply blown away by this movie.

Early sci-fi movie on fight between zeppelins and planes. Watching this movie - a part from the element that's in common with all origin's movies, so the sense of pioneering, the experiments with film's materials - gives to you a sense of power and meaninglessness at the same time for what is one of the most ancient human desire: fly. In 1909 we are in the period in which rudimental planes starts to go on, and that's a really point of evolution for man: he is far away from earth. So this movie has to be remembered also as a philosophical and historical document of this sense of power and weakness of man, this fundamental relation between desire, sky, technology and war.

This is an imaginative early film full of special effects--what film historians call a "trick film". None of the effects, including substitution splices, miniatures and pyrotechnics, were invented here; in fact, they'd been employed for countless movies made earlier, especially in the work of Georges Méliès. Additionally, as others have mentioned, they do appear primitive today, but must have remained impressive enough back then to be used in so many pictures. Nevertheless, the narrative of a Zeppelin invasion of England is unique and proved to be a precursor to Germany's use of Zeppelins against England during WWI about five years later. In recognition of this, the film was re-released in January 1915. In film, as in real life, however, these airships were more frightening and technologically impressive than they were effective in battle. The film also features a primitive tank and fighter biplanes, as well as a funky-looking surface-to-air missile.

Walter R. Booth was one of the best trick-film artists of early cinema to follow in the footsteps of Méliès. Before making this one, "The Airship Destroyer", and others for Charles Urban's company, he made trick films for R.W. Paul. The earliest that survives today appears to be "Upside Down, or the Human Flies" (from 1899). Some of the other interesting early films to feature trick effects that Booth and Paul collaborated on include "The Magic Sword", "Scrooge; or Marley's Ghost" (both from 1901) and "The '?' Motorist".

For another Booth-Urban trick film available on the web, see "Willie's Magic Wand" (1907).

An inventor is working on a novel weapon when a fleet of enemy airships are sighted. An armoured car equipped with an anti-aircraft gun is dispatched but is destroyed, as is the biplane that attempts to shoot down one of the marauding airships. After the home of the inventor's girlfriend is bombed and the local cathedral goes up in flames, the inventor finally launches his 'aerial torpedo', a rocket-assisted, propeller-driven, surface-to-air UAV that damages the gas bag of the enemy ship, causing it to crash in pieces into a lake. For a short, the film has a strong narrative flow and a lot happens in seven minutes. The first science fiction film made in England, 'The Airship Destroyer' is also the first film in the 'military science-fiction' sub-genre and is remarkably prescient. Although military use of airships had been predicted by H.G. Wells (among others), Booth's film predates the first actual aerial attack by two years (a bomb was dropped on Turkish troops from an Italian airplane in Libya on November 1, 1911). Although surface-to-air missiles came much later and were dramatically different from Booth's contraption, the basic concept was correct and ahead of its time. The film's special effects, a mix of models, full-size props, cut-outs, and background paintings, are quite novel and effective for the era. There were few intertitles on the version I watched (on-line) but the story was not difficult to follow, and the score, although clearly not original, was fine. Typical of silent films, the acting is overly-dramatic and stagy, but the film is still entertaining and well-worth watching. The following year Booth directed another 'future weapon' story 'The Aerial Submarine', then returned to the future of strategic bombing in 'The Aerial Anarchists' (1911), which sadly has been lost.

The 1st ever aerial warfare movie to be released took place in December 1909 when "The Aerial Destroyer," otherwise known as "The Aerial Torpedo" or "The Battle of the Clouds," or in the U.S. "The Battle in the Clouds" was initially seen by English filmgoers. United Kingdom's director Walter R. Booth, who specialized in special effects, produced this invasion film, which derived from a popular literature genre in the late 1800's and early 1900's. Booth's film drew inspiration from H.G. Wells' recent story, "The War In The Air (1908)".

Booth's effects are sure to illicit a laugh from today's sophisticated audience. This fantasy shows balloon airships (dirigibles) invading an unnamed country, bombing armored vehicles and city buildings. The suffering country sends war planes to shoot down these airships. Made in 1909, such rudimentary planes reflect the rudimentary understanding of how aerial vehicles looked like. There is a drama within the war confines of "The Aerial Destroyer" with a couple of unmarried lovers who have been rejected to enter matrimony by the woman's father. Booth was ahead of his time inserting what has become standard in wartime movies by containing a love interest inside violent films in an effort to attract the female audience.

What makes Booth's film so prophetic is that in seven years Germany would fly dirigibles over the English channel to bomb London during World War One. Howard Hughes' 1930 film, "Hell's Angels," would be more graphically believable than Hughes' early effort here.