Wings

Rating

Director

William A. Wellman

Screenplay

John Mark Saunders, Hope Loring, Louis D. Leighton

Length

139 min.

Starring

Clara Bow, Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Richard Arlen, Jobyna Ralston, El Brendel, Richard Tucker, Gary Cooper, Gunboat Smith, Henry B. Walthall, Roscoe Karns, Julia Swayne Gordon, Arlette Marchal

MPAA Rating

N/A

Review

The first film ever to win the Best Picture award at the Academy Awards is also the only silent feature. Wings tells the story of a fighter pilot in The Great War and the many loves and losses he experiences while fighting for his country.

The film opens as Jack Powell (Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers) finishes work ona stripped down motor car. Watching and helping is his neighbor Mary Preston(Clara Bow). Together, they finish work on what Mary would soon christen the Shooting Star. When she suggests what a man is supposed to do when he sees a shooting star is kiss the girl he loves, Mary’s left in the dust as he goes off to see Sylvia Lewis (Jobyna Ralston) a girl from the city. She loves David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) who would soon become Jack’s buddy in arms in the sky.

After registering for the military, both men become pilots and go through a short training sequence before ending up on their first Dawn Patrol. As they take to the sky, they are soon faced with a formation of German fighters that results in an aerial battle.

Where facial expression carries the weight of the story, Rogers and Bow are quite good. Rogers’ best scenes are later in the film when faced with a great number of sorrows. Arlen is at his best when competing with Rogers over the same girl. Despite Jack thinking Sylvia loves him because she gave him a locket, David knows Sylvia actually loves him and does what he can not to dash Jack’s dreams. It’s the only plot that never fully resolves by the film’send.

Director William A. Wellman wasn’t even nominated for the directing prize for his best production winner. Wings is one of only three films in Academy history to suffer such a feat (Grand Hotel and Driving Miss Daisy are the other two).It is primarily his faults that keep the film from being better than it could have. Despite some amazing effects (the aerial combat scenes would soon be outdone by Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels)for the time, Wings fails to amount to more than your average war film.

During one scene, as soldiers are marching off in the lower foreground, with the sky as its background, several images of war are exposed over the film to create an intriguing effect. It’s one of the few stylistic elements that works in a movie filled with clichés. As the silent era was coming to an end, films like Wings and Sunrise (the film that should have been called best picture despite being awarded the prize for Artistic Quality of Production) were dying breeds in 1927 as evinced by the following year’s Academy Award winner the all-talking, all-singing The Broadway Melody.

Wings isn’t a masterpiece. It’s an interesting story that certainly isn’t abashed in its portrayal of the hazards of war. However, the film isn’t much more than a footnote to history. With its Academy Award win as Best Picture, Wings has been rescued from what would have been almost obscurity.

Review Written

October 3, 2006