Martin Scorsese’s biographical film The Aviator recounts the life of Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), an American filmmaker, entrepreneur, and aviation enthusiast. In The Aviator, Hughes strives to “fly the fastest planes ever bit, make the biggest movies ever, and be the richest man in the world.”1 However, he is met with constant relational, financial, and mental obstacles that hinder his progress towards achieving his goals and finding happiness. His greatest obstacle is, perhaps, his mental illnesses that resemble obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and paranoia.
Although, Howard experiences moments of happiness and triumph, he struggles with and eventually succumbs to his mental illness. Scorsese uses various lighting techniques and color schemes to indicate both negative and positive emotions in Hughes. Eye-level backlighting and green and yellow accompany times of stress for Howard, whereas whiteouts and the color brown indicate positive situations for the aviator.
Throughout the film, Hughes must struggle to achieve his goals of creating films and building airplanes, and his stress and frustration with these processes, as well as with his mental disorder, is often evoked using strong backlighting. Early in the film, Hughes views the dailies for his first film Hell’s Angels, which has encountered many expensive, maddening obstacles during its production. Howard sits in his chair with a displeased look on his face as he watches the film reels; in eye-level shots of him, the projector shines bright beams of light from behind his scowling face as he rants about how the action scene did not translate well onto film. Further into the production of Hell’s Angels, Howard sits in his editing theater, scowling with another projector acting as a backlight while Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly), his financial adviser, tells him the film is too expensive.
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While these examples serve to show Scorsese’s use of strong backlighting to evoke anger and frustration, other instances demonstrate how this lighting technique accompany manifestations of Hughes’ illness. After a difficult breakup with his almost-wife Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), Howard sits in a warehouse with a large floodlight behind him as he calls in women to determine if they are suited to be his lady. He asks questions such as if the women have any scars, indicating the presence of his OCD-induced perfectionism in this decision. In another example, Howard has a serious psychological breakdown, and takes up residency in his theater. He sits in the theater chair, naked and surrounded with evidence of his decaying mental condition, with the projector shining behind him. In these instances, the backlight, which creates a silhouette of Hughes, show him as a shadow of his former, healthy self. Thus, by the use of dramatic backlighting, Hughes’ anger and illness are highlighted.
Another accompanying feature to Howard’s negative emotions is the color yellow, which is specifically associated with humiliation that occurs in numerous scenes where Hughes finds himself in situations that threaten his pride. Several instances of this occur in relation to Katherine. The first such instance occurs after Kate and Howard have been together for some time. Kate, wearing a bold yellow dress, brings Howard to the theater, but as soon as they enter the foyer she runs off to converse with Mr. Mayer (Stanley DeSantis), the head of Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer studios-a rival of Howards. Hughes stands awkwardly among the crowd, watching Katherine, in her mustard-colored gown, fawn over Mayer. Howard soon scurries off to the bathroom to escape from the humiliation of being abandoned by Kate.
Additionally, due to Hughes’ promiscuousness and other factors, Kate decides to leave him. After she tells Howard she is leaving him for another man— an announcement that would deflate the ego of any man— Howard burns all of his clothes. During this almost ritualistic burning, the framing of shots is such that bright yellow flames often leap into the frame such that they cover Hughes in the shot. Thus, yellow is a companion to Howard in this moment of deep humiliation.
However, Hepburn is not the only character that humiliates Howard. Senator Owen Brewster (Alan Alda) exploits Hughes’ mental illness and tries to discredit Hughes through court hearings that accuse Howard of being a war-profiteer. Brewster wears yellow-rimmed glasses throughout the movie, and this costume element thus associates yellow with Howard’s humiliation at the hands of this senator. Furthermore, Brewster invites Howard to his home, where he serves Howard a dinner with finger-printed dishes and food that exacerbates Hughes’ OCD. Natural sunlight illuminates this scene, bringing a yellowish tint to the shots; additionally, yellow flower arrangements on the table further associate the color with Howard’s humiliation at having his mental disorder exploited.
Finally, in the last scene of the movie, Howard suffers a mental break during the party to celebrate the Hercules’ flight and must be ushered out of the venue and into a small outbuilding with a yellow door to avoid the humiliation of having everyone at the party discover his illness. Thus, in many instances, props, costumes, and lighting associate the color yellow with
Whereas yellow represents Howard’s humiliation, green, primarily in the set, represents Howard’s mental illness. Numerous examples throughout the film surround Hughes with the color green during episodes of his illness. After he leaves the theater foyer when Kate speaks with Mayer, Howard enters a bathroom with green walls. In this scene, Howard washes his hands using his specific procedure, but during this process a disabled man enters the bathroom.
When the man asks for Howard to pass him a towel, Howard must decline because he cannot stop his washing process. In a similar scene later in the film, Howard enters the bright green bathroom of the Coconut Grove after a tense discussion with Trippe; he uses up all of the towels washes his hands and his shirt-which he thought had some sort of stain. Without any towels with which to open the door, Hughes waits in the bathroom until someone comes in so that he can slip out of the door. These similar bathroom scenes strongly align Howard’s OCD processes with the color green. Further manifestations of his disorder are also associated with green.
For example, after Howard’s XF-11 spy plane crashes, he is confronted by Ava Garner (Kate Beckinsale) in her green-colored living room about all of the bugs he planted in her home; this scene associates green with Hughes’ paranoia. Hughes’ obsession with random objects is also represented by green during the scene in Brewer’s home. In a green-themed room in the house, Howard becomes fixated on a picture of, and then the idea of, a llama. In these scenes and many others, Scorsese associates the color green, which so often represents life, with Howard’s debilitating illness.
Although yellow and green represent negative experiences for Howard, Scorsese associates the color brown with positive situations. For example, Howard’s home, particularly his study, is filled with brown-tones. This study is a room that Howard tells Kate he likes, and it acts as a place of solace for him. When the FBI come to his house to search for evidence for Brewster’s hearings, Hughes becomes extremely distressed when the agents enter his study, touching things and messing up the room. Unlike the study, which eventually becomes disrupted, Hughes’ childhood home appears pristine in several flashbacks.
In these flashbacks, Hughes is with his mother in a warmly tinted, brown room. His mother speaks to him while she washes him, putting him in a position of vulnerability that indicates his feelings of safety in this sepia- colored space. However, not all instances of the color brown as associated with a particular location. During a stressful dinner with Kate’s family, Howard often looks to Kate for support. In several shots during this dinner scene, close-ups of Kate show her framed the brown background of another room in the house, whereas all of the other family members are associated with green –which is, as previously discussed, a negative color. Thus, brown often represents spaces and situations in which Howard feels safe and at peace.
An additional method Scorsese employs to indicate positive moments for Howard is an overexposure effect in which bright, white light emanates from a point on the screen. Early in the film, after a very successful premier of Hell’s Angels, Howard exits the theater to face the crowd outside. As the photographers snap pictures of him, Howard seems to glow with an overexposure effect, signaling his radiant feeling due to the success of his film. Later, when he meets Katherine and they go flying, Howard lets Kate fly his plane. He watches her as see maneuvers the plane, and for one shot her face seems to glow, like Howard did at the premier. In another flight scene in which Hughes first flies his NR 285Y-what he hopes is the fastest plane ever built—the white out effect occurs on a shot of him flying. Both of these overexposures during flight scenes signal Howard’s joy when he flies. Overall, this light effect serves to emphasize Hughes’ rare, heavenly feelings of joy.
Throughout the film, director Martin Scorsese carefully uses color and unique lighting techniques to allow the audience to interpret Howard Hughes’ emotions and to notice Howard’s decent into insanity. Through using minimal key and fill lighting with a strong back light, Scorsese signals Hughes’ anger and psychotic mental states. However, a bright light glowing to a whiteout from a point on the screen signals joy. Yellow and green are associated with humiliation and mental illness, but brown indicates feelings of safety and happiness. Thus by carefully associating these elements of mise en scène with Howard’s particular moods and mental states, Scorsese allows viewers of The Aviator a glimpse into the brilliant, but troubled mind of Howard Hughes.
