The Flying Dane (1957)

Jacob Ellehammer was a pioneer of mechanical engineering who developed petrol-driven motors and went on to pioneer aviation techniques that actually saw contraptions get off the ground. That imagination is quite well captured here as this documentary marries an illustrative look at the history of flight from Da Vinci onwards - using early sketches and photographs - with Ellehammer’s more practical conceptual designs. Unlike with many of the whackier ideas to get mankind airborne, his used more calculated scientific approaches based on the aerodynamics of windmills whilst looking at the impact of weight and the requirements for thrust to get up and, more importantly, stay up. There’s quite a nerve-wracking sequence featuring an intrepid would-be flier perched half way up the Eiffel Tower. He is dressed in some glorified Cagoul-style clobber that he hopes will act like wings and the ensuing images makes the point about ill-conceived thinking well. He nervously leaps and, well… It’s got a jolly accompanying score and there is some entertaining bi-plane and tri-plane archive to liven up the narration as it concludes with a selection of this man’s more earthbound vehicles that ranged from commercial to industrial vehicles, too. It packs quite a lot into quarter of an hour and it is quite impressive that so much of the archive still exists to show us a less haphazard approach to taking to the skies.