Wernher von Braun was a rocket scientist without whom it is unlikely the Apollo moon mission would have succeeded. Alas, his rocket skills which were employed by the United States were developed in the V2 rocket program in Nazi Germany.
I didn’t know much about von Bruan before seeing 1960 biopic I Am at the Stars. Honestly, I’m not sure how much I know about him after watching it. If I was being charitable, I would say the feature provides an objective view of his life and work. If I was being more realistic, I would call this a hagiography that pays lip service to his detractors, acknowledging and then disputing or ignoring negative views of the man.
The film opens in a pre-war Berlin of the 1920’s. A teenaged Wernher launches a rocket off the roof of family mansion, only to have it crash through a neighbor’s greenhouse. That structure is destroyed, which seemed to foreshadow his work on the V2. If the neighbor had been British, the irony would have been perfect.
The story quickly moves into the 1930’s, where Wernher is now played by Curd Jürgens. The change in actors in what, at most, would be a span just shy of two decades is the least believable element in the film. That a teenage boy would become a solidly middle-aged man in that time is laughable.
Less ridiculous, though still unbelievable, is the melodrama blanketing this portrayal of his years working for the Nazis. Jürgens is given a love interest in Victoria Shaw, which is fine, though scenes of him with the character who would become his wife feel like an obligatory, tossed-off element. More sensational is Gia Scala as his secretary, who is secretly an Allied spy. Herbert Lom, as one of Jürgens’s most trusted aides, is having an affair with Scala, and there is some preposterous drama here surrounding their relationship and her double life.
Similar to modern biopics, I suspect some characters are pastiches of multiple real-life persons, while others are probably invented out of whole cloth. But I suspect more characters and situations here are the product of creative screenwriting than what is normally acceptable. Although Lom is as dependable as ever, something scans as a bit too pat about his character, and so I suspect he was one such fabrication. And I would likely die of shock if it turned about Scala’s character was ever a real person.
One scene I didn’t buy is the rocket program finally having their first successful launch only after a high-ranking party official gives them a final thirty days to do so. I don’t know if von Braun ever claimed such a moment happened, but this feels too much like a hack writer’s touch for me to believe it.
I suppose the greatest struggle in writing this script was how to handle von Braun’s association with the Nazis, and we will likely never know his real feelings at the time or the extent of his knowledge about their war atrocities. Though pure hokum, I like a line Jürgens says to Lea Seidl, playing his mother: “My broomsticks fly without the devil’s help. But if they didn’t, I would be willing to sign with them.” I was instantly reminded of a line from “Your Racist Friend” by They Might Be Giants: “Can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.”
When it becomes obvious the end of the war is near, von Braun and some of his fellow rocket scientists opt to surrender to one of the Allies. A nice touch is they don’t seem to be especially choosy as to which of those countries they prefer. I also found it interesting the American military bosses who are over the secret rocket development program are almost (almost) as focused on results as those in Germany had been, though I doubt the nations had the same means of motivation. At least, I hope they didn’t.
I swear the second half of the movie, the part set in the states, is as long as that which was set in Germany, and this half becomes a real slog. While the first half was heavy on the melodrama, at least that was mildly entertaining. What comes after is long on the talk, and I mean looong.
I’m sure most of today’s biopics are as loose with the facts as I suspect I Aim at the Stars to be. At least it is partly entertaining, which I doubt one could say of the talk show von Braun had on TV for a while in the 1950’s—something I still can’t believe ever existed. I mostly wish the controversial history of von Braun had been explored in more detail. Even more than that, I had hoped for insights as to his politics and ethics, which surely had to be complicated. Just ask the subject of a recent biopic, Robert Oppenheimer.
Dir: J. Lee Thompson
Starring Cur Jürgens, Victoria Shaw, Herbert Lom, Gia Scala
Watched on Umbrella blu-ray (region B)