The first film to win Best Production at the 1929 Academy Awards, Wings is an marvelous film that defined how war pictures would be made for the next 75 years.
A simple tale of neighbors who go to fight in a war, as well as the stories of the women who love them, it contained some of the most radical battle scenes ever filmed. Not bound by the constraints of sound equipment, all the flight scenes were filmed in the air in real planes. Real bombs were used, as well as real Army equipment. The Army allowed filming on base in Texas, and provided oversight, expertise and equipment.
The film also has some of the most moving images of the horrors of war ever filmed, second maybe to All Quiet On The Western Front or Soldaat Van Oranje. Saving Ryan’s Privates can’t come close.
Clara Bow is luminous, as always; but the performance of the young Gary Cooper caught many an eye.
Really? A Seattle theater ran Wings for the 75th anniversary last year, and I have to say it was one of the least successful silent films I’ve seen. By no means terrible, mind you, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the other first Best Picture winner, Sunrise.
I thought Clara Bow was pretty awful in a part that’s not very well written, and the drunk scenes in Paris were just embarrassing.
The aerial scenes are pretty terrific, though, and Gary Cooper’s short appearance packs a punch.
I’ll have to disgree with Interrobang!? and agree with Ilsa_Lund. I thought Wings was a wonderful movie! (Of course, I’m nuts about aircraft.) Now, if I could only find my copy of it…
I liked it . . . But it’s not in my Top 10, or even my Top 50. Other 1927 films I think were as good—or better—than Wings include Chicago (brilliant performance by Phyllis Haver, good, dark script); It (already discussed elsewhere); The Lodger (early Hitchcock); Love (Garbo & Gilbert’s silent “Anna Karenina,” better than her talkie); Metropolis (yowza!); Abel Gance’s Napoleon; Seventh Heaven (great tearjerker); Sunrise . . .
. . . sadly, talkies showed up just as the silent screen was at its apex as an art form . . .
I don’t mean to sound like I don’t like Wings . . . Guess I am playing Devil’s Advocate . . . But Hearts of the World and The Big Parade are better silent war films in my book . . .
When my wife and I were first dating, I mentioned that I enjoyed watching Wings, in fact referring to the Discovery Channel series on the history of aircraft.
She replied “Oh me too, that Robyn Bernard is so cute.”
Around 1980 or so a film club I belonged to showed Wings. There was an old guy in his eighties who was a theater organist back in the silent era and he had the score for the movie in his collection. The plan was to bring in a portable organ and have him play a live accompaniment that Saturday. Unfortunately, he wasn’t feeling enough that evening and we had to make do with a recorded score he had taped a few years earlier. Still, it was nice seeing it on the big screen with the same music the audiences enjoyed when it was first released. I think the impact of the movie is much greater then, than on video
William Wellman, who directed “Wings,” had been a pilot in the war, and thirty years later made the melodrama “Layfayette Esquadrille” portraying his younger self as a side character.
I’ll have to side with the others here with “The Big Parade” being the better film. Probably unfairly, since I put every war movie to the litmus test of being accurate to both historical events and actual human nature, even when its virutes for storytelling and technical mastery are supurb.
But, consider that the Iraq War II has gone on approximately as long as the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Over that 300 days an American soldier or Marine has been killed every 14 hours, on average. France lost a soldier every 80 seconds for this same period of time. The least we can do is tell the story of their war truthfully, not just use it as a backdrop for a jaunty romp.
Of course, movie producers can’t afford such sensibilites, and demanded things like more shots of the mascot lion cub, and less dwelling on a pilot’s life expectancy of 20 hours.
La Passion d’Jeanne d’Arc, Sunrise, It, Metropolis, Nosferatu, The Phantom Of The Opera, Intolerance, Biograph Shorts, The Gold Rush, City Lights, The General, etc.. The first are the most important.
