Aviator: Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese, a story of elegance
The role that earned Leo his very first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
While Leonardo DiCaprio covets his second Oscar for Best Actor for One Battle after anotherwe will find the actor this evening on Arte in another of his great roles: that of the businessman and producer Howard Hughes, one of the richest and most powerful men in post-First World War America, told with mastery in Aviator. A role which earned Leo, in 2005, his very first nomination for the Best Actor statuette.
The biopic focuses particularly on the heyday of Hughes, an eccentric playboy secretly ravaged by his mental disorders, from the early 1930s. Evoking his accomplishments as well as his tumultuous loves with Katharine Hepburn and Ava Gardner, Martin Scorsese’s film intends to discern the elusive and complex personality of one of these destinies that America loves.
To play the charismatic Hughes, we find the filmmaker’s favorite actor for fifteen years already, Leonardo DiCaprio, surrounded for this film by a prestigious cast with Cate Blanchett as Hepburn and Kate Beckinsale as Gardner, but also John C. Reilly, Alec Baldwin, Alan Alda, Ian Holm, Jude Law, Willem Dafoe… The opportunity for the actor not only to rub shoulders with a part of the history of contemporary America but also to a character known at the time for his extraordinary seductive charisma.
Mission assured on this point: in the tailor-made costumes by Sandy Powell (Scorsese’s regular costume designer since Gangs of New York), Leo once again capsizes hearts as a vintage gentleman. As for Powell, in 2004 she won a second well-deserved Oscar after the one won five years earlier for Shakespeare in Love. In total, Aviator will win five statuettes, mainly in the technical categories, but also for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, the first of Cate Blanchett’s two Oscars. DiCaprio will win the second of his five nominations for the Oscar for best actor, despite the special relationship that binds him to this ceremony, regularly accused of ignoring him (he finally made up for it thanks to The Revenant, in 2016).
The film ultimately cemented the creative relationship that today links Marty and Leo over six films (Gangs of New York, Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island, The Wolf of Wall Street and Killers of the Flower Moon), an artistic lineage where the filmmaker magnifies as rarely the actor who has become a superstar of the seventh art.
Leonardo DiCaprio: “No, I’m not afraid of madness”
The synopsis of the film: Aviator traces twenty years (from 1927 to 1947) in the life of Hollywood mogul Howard Hughes. Daredevil, film producer, pioneer of civil aviation and insatiable seducer, he was nonetheless a victim of physical handicaps and obsessive disorders. An illness which caused him to end his life as a recluse.
Trailer:
