Odelecol Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

JohnHowardReid Conway Tearle (Commander Hall), Virginia Valli (Mrs Hall), Ricardo Cortez (Tom Armstrong), Duke Martin (Lieutenant Wallace), Kathryn McGuire (Nancy), Winter Hall (Wilson).Director: EDWARD SLOMAN. Screenplay: Frances Hyland. Dialogue: Charles Kenyon. Story: Jack Natteford. Film editors: Martin G. Cohn, Donn Hayes. Photography: Jackson Rose. Art director: Hervey Libbert. Set decorator: George Sawley. Special effects: Jack Robson, Kenneth Peach. RCA Sound System. A Tiffany-Stahl Production. Recording engineer: Jerry Eisenberg. Sound technician: John Buddy Myers.Copyright 10 December 1929 by Tiffany Productions, Inc. New York opening at the Gaiety: 1 February 1930. U.S. release: 20 December 1929. 8 reels. 6,882 feet. 76½ minutes.SYNOPSIS: A dirigible crash-lands near the South Pole.COMMENT: The Tiffany-Stahl company bills itself as "The Better Entertainment". Better than what, one might ask? The New York Times reviewer had his finger on the pulse when he described all three of the principal performances as "not especially praiseworthy", the story as both unintelligent and uninteresting, the plotting as "clumsy", and the special effects as "far from impressive". Well, maybe he was a little over-hard on the effects. Aside from one or two remarkable achievements like the fall down the snow- cliff, realistic they are not. But some of the glass shots of the dirigible on the ice have a certain pictorial splendor, and some of the model- work is not bad. All the same, the story is trash, the principals are a dull, lifeless trio. Mr. Cortez tries hard to instill a bit of vigor into a thankless role, but wooden Tearle and that impossibly painted doll with her silly little voice, Virginia Valli, are a dead loss. Ed Sloman's tepid, static, colorless direction is no help either.

kidboots Virginia Valli had been a stenographer who broke into films in 1915. Her beauty found her fame and she made many films during the twenties. With talkies though, her voice was too high pitched for the primitive microphone technology - she only made a few before retiring for marriage with Charles Farrell. In "The Lost Zeppelin" she does play a very whiney woman, Miriam, who while married to Commander Donald Hall (Conway Tearle) is desperately in love with Tom Armstrong (Ricardo Cortez). The scene on the couch where she is imploring Armstrong to tell her the truth about her husband's bravery would have most people running from the room holding their ears!!Both Tearle and Cortez play their parts with a stiff upper lip: if you have ever seen Tearle in movies you know it is his usual acting style but Cortez I think was still finding his talkie feet and within a year would be his usual relaxed charming self in films like "Behind Office Doors" and "The Maltese Falcon".Even though Hall is devastated by seeing his wife in the arms of another man the show must go on - the show being an expedition to the South Pole and, you guessed it, Hall and Armstrong are going together!! Even though Tiffany ("the better entertainment") was the top of the tree as far as independent studios went, it is an amazingly ambitious epic. The first 20 minutes did drag but it may have been to lure patrons in for some talk, for once in the air it really took off! The South Pole was very topical at the time as Admiral Byrd was making his first expeditions. The visual effects are terrific, the zeppelin in the air looked pretty realistic as it puttered through the clouds and above the polar naval base. Kenneth Peach Sr. A.S.C. was the cameraman and Jack Robson was a specialist in mechanical effects.A storm disables the zeppelin and it crashes through the ice. Hall and Armstrong explore the surrounding area but the man with them dies in an avalanche and they return to find the rest of the crew dead. The sound effects do get tedious but try watching Paramount's "The Studio Murder Mystery" thunderstorm scenes and you will find this movie isn't so bad. Primitive sound effects was a great leveller of studios both big and small. Meanwhile Miriam is brought up to date by constant newscasts and it is only at the end with the inevitable drawing room showdown that the film becomes static and betrays it's early talkie status. Even the clichéd scene where Hall forces Armstrong to return to base and a hero's welcome while he faces the unknown is spruced up with a twist in the last few minutes.Highly Recommended.

earlytalkie That this exsists at all is probably a minor miracle. Legend has it that David Selznick purchased all of the Tiffany-Stahl studio's negatives to utilize for the burning of Atlanta sequence in Gone With The Wind. Extant prints of films from this studio are rare, indeed. That aside, The Lost Zeppelin shows that the little studio was indeed trying to be up-to-date in marketing all-talking pictures. The dialouge delivery in the first section of the picture, before we get to the meat of the story, hearkens back to The Lights of New York (1928). Pregnant pauses and actors unsure about how to properly deliver dialouge are apparent. When the story gets to the dirigible party and their problems, the pace picks up and there are some pretty neat (for their time) effects. The studio must be praised for putting forth a story that is at once novel and original. This was released at Christmastime 1929 and it seems to have been successful in some quarters. In it's premiere in St.Louis, for example, the ads reported a take of $30,900 for the Christmas weekend. Pocket change today, but we must remember the time in which it was released. Conway Tearle and Virginia Valli are the top-billed players. The opening credits proclaim that this was "Synchronized by RCA Photophone". The print on the Alpha DVD was acceptably clear. In all, a film which will probably appeal to those who enjoy the early talkies. There are plenty of 20s fashions, hairdos and a huge radio in the living room of the heroine. Radio, in fact, is utilized throughout the film as a way to chart the progress of the Zeppelin. The Zeppelin itself is neatly represented by stock footage and the use of some neat miniatures. This is not an expensive film to buy and will be entertaining to those who enjoy film history.

dbborroughs Dated adventure film about an attempt to be the first to fly a zeppelin over the South Pole.The film is essentially two movies. The first is a long drawn out sequence at the start showing how the wife of the head of the expedition is in love with the second in command. This runs for about 25 minutes as they dress go to a send off party and then have guilt over the whole thing. Despite some good dialog this part of the movie is deadly dull. The rest of the film concerns the expedition and is much more interesting. Here we follow the flight as we see the airship fly to toward the Pole and eventually run into trouble (this isn't giving anything away because one need only look at the title to see what happens). This part of the film has some fantastic effects work with the shots of the zeppelin in flight and the Antarctic landscape with all its dangers over powering any feelings that this film is anything less than spectacular. What we see on screen is truly amazing since it was done with out computers and comes across looking oh so more real for it. The films flaws are for the most part limited to the fact that this film was made in the early days of sound and so we either have very talky sequences or ones that are very quiet.If you want to see some stunning effects in a good adventure you might want to try this, though you'll want to fast forward through the first 25 minutes since they really can be dull. (This would make a good double feature with the Red Tent the true story of similar attempt to fly an airship over the North Pole a few years before this was made, and which was probably the inspiration for this film)