The Aviator

Martin Scorsese’s 2004 film runs from 1927 to 1947, short of the reclusive years that made Howard Hughes a legend. The image is a calendar. The opening is graded to imitate two colour Technicolor, so greens read blue and golf course grass comes out wrong, while later sections take the saturated three strip look. Rob Legato built the looks as lookup tables in After Effects and Stephen Nakamura graded at Technicolor Digital Intermediates. The flying was not computer generated. Aero Telemetry built radio controlled models that flew; the Spruce Goose went off a barge and Legato shot it from a 1948 boat, with period craft and costumed extras behind it. Eleven nominations, five wins: Actress in a Supporting Role for Cate Blanchett, plus Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design and Film Editing. DiCaprio was nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, Scorsese for Directing and Alan Alda for Actor in a Supporting Role; Best Picture went to Million Dollar Baby. For the compulsion scenes DiCaprio worked with Dr Jeffrey Schwartz of UCLA, who afterwards said he had been extremely concerned for the actor’s health. A good fit if you read the opening’s strange colour as design, not a faulty transfer. Not for viewers waiting on Hughes’s final decades; the film closes in 1947.