Aeroplane Flight and Wreck (Piloted by M. Cody) (1910) User Reviews

An Interesting Combination of Pioneering Efforts in Two Fields

[Snow Leopard · 24 March 2004]

Most of the films that have survived from the earliest years of cinema are interesting in some respect, but this one particularly so, in that it gives you a look at two fields in their formative years. The still-recent invention of the movie camera is used to show a representative example of pioneering efforts in aviation.

The camera begins to follow the plane from the time when it leaves the hangar, and sticks with it as best as possible through its flight. At times, the plane moves too quickly for the camera to catch everything, but in general it is a creditable job for a time when that kind of photography was not so common.

The airplane itself is quite interesting, since it is the kind of eccentric-looking contraption that was common in the early years of powered flight. This short film also does a decent job of capturing the mood of those who were involved with the flight, as they hope that their hard work will prove worthwhile.

All in all, this is a pretty interesting little feature.

Boring plain drivel

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 18 May 2016]

"Aeroplane Flight and Wreck (Piloted by M. Cody)" is a 4-minute black-and-white short film by an unknown director that was made in the year 1910. So this one is already way over 100 years old and still film existed already for several decades at this point. This is also why I cannot be more generous with my rating here. I have seen films from the 19th century that were a lot more interesting than this one here although hey only went on for a couple seconds or a minute. To put it in a time perspective, this one here was done shortly before the sinking of the Titanic and the outbreak of World War I. We see a couple men moving an airplane out of a garage and one of them pilots it, but crashes quickly. That is all. Not too entertaining in my opinion and if there is any reason to see this one, then it is to see how planes looked like over 100 years ago. Not recommended.

RIP mr. Cody, his sacrifice has been in vain.

[Kitahito · 4/10 · 24 March 2021]

So much buildup (~2 and a half minute, but still...) for basically nothing, sadly the "flight" part of mr. Cody's flight was nonexistent: after an abrupt cut, we only witness the not so glorious crash landing. Well, at least we can see the wrecked aeroplane too, that's a big plus in my book. Still, a disappointment.

Great for aviation buffs

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 7 July 2008]

It's really hard to rate many of the early films, as they were mostly very short films featuring practically no story. By 1910, when this film was made, this had changed a bit--though the bulk of films still were only a few minutes long. Sure, there were some exceptions such as Georges Méliès' feature-length "Voyage dans le Lune" (1902) which was 14 minutes long and "The Great Train Robbery" (1903) which was 12 minutes long. But the bulk of the films people went to see were a lot like the 4 minute long "Aeroplane Flight and Wreck". Essentially, most films still hadn't changed that much since the early Lumière Brothers films other than they'd gotten a bit longer (from 90 seconds to 240 seconds) and the camera was no longer stationary during the entire film.

Here in this film, something occurs that the Lumières could not have done--the camera follows (as best it can) a plane taking off and soon crashing. Audiences of the day must have been astounded to watch an early airplane (apparently a Curtis biplane) spectacularly crash--especially because in 1910 few people had still actually seen an airplane. By today's standards, the crash is a major anti-climax, as the plane is only going perhaps 20 miles and hour when it thuds unexpectedly to the earth from a height of perhaps 10 or 20 feet! I would assume the crash was not planned and just occurred by chance. Considering the pilot looked okay afterwords, it seems this was actually a very good thing--giving the audiences a thrill.

While most modern audiences probably won't be particularly amazed by the film, it is great for film buffs and people who would like to see perhaps the earliest footage of a plane in flight (the 1903 Wright Brothers flight was only captures by a camera--not a moving picture camera and very few additional flights actually occurred between 1903 and 1910).

Chock-Full Of Pans and Nice Camera-work

[Tornado_Sam · 24 August 2017]

This film is worth-seeing simply because of the fact that it shows how airplanes (or aeroplanes) looked over a hundred years ago. Another thing is that the camera placements are well done and also there are pans used elaborately to capture the preparation, take-off, and crash of the aeroplane.

Taken on June 23, 1910, the producers of the film are unknown. The pilot, as the title tells us, is a man named M. Cody who appears to love flying aeroplanes. Here he seems to be flying the plane for no reason at all. I bet he just thought, "Hmm, I'm bored. Oh yeah, I've got a plane to fly. I think I'll take a joyride! And maybe get a couple of cameramen to film me to show how cool I am!" But sadly, instead of a joyride, he got a crash. Unfortunately the crash really isn't that clear to us as it wasn't expected, thus the cameramen didn't capture it well. Too bad it wasn't filmed better, because we hardly even see it really happen. But I'm glad they filmed the wreck afterwards, anyway.

Decent short film, though for the audiences in 1910 this might have been not as successful as the whole thing is an actuality, not an elaborate presentation as other filmmakers had been developing filmmaking more than this director (whoever he was) had been. Still, good they used advanced panning to make it look a little less primitive.