Landships II

Now here's a real curiosity...

I'm fascinated by movie visual effects, especially those involving miniatures, and as well as trying to find out all about how they're done, I'm also interested in the history of such effects. Consequently, I'm always on the lookout for films on video, DVD or the internet with interesting effects.

I have just received in the post a DVD of 'Noah's Ark', an early disaster movie/biblical epic - you can read about it here: Noah's Ark (1928) Wikipedia Entry

The film has an odd structure, as it segues from a Great War melodrama to relating the tale of The Flood!

But imagine my surprise when, as I was skipping through the DVD, I spotted a nice cameo appearance nearly half-way through by a model of a Langer Max long-range gun! It is the Langer Max which bombards the town as related in the Wikipedia plot synopsis (abridged below):

On the eve of the Great War, American Travis and German Marie meet on the Orient Express, which wrecks when a bridge washes out. Travis, and his friend Al, rescue Marie, and Travis falls in love with her. When the war breaks out, Al enlists and Travis follows him shortly, after the two lovers have married. When a Russian military officer accuses Marie of being a German spy, she is sentenced to face a firing squad, but Travis, who is part of the squad, rescues her in the nick of time. When the French town they are hiding in is bombarded by the Germans, the couple and others are trapped below a demolished building. Here, a minister makes a lengthy comparison of the war to the ancient Biblical account of the time of Noah and the Flood.

Attached are screengrabs of Max's (brief) appearance. Real actors are nicely combined with the model - I suspect the gun is a 'foreground miniature', with the whole shot done in-camera.