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An Exercise In Nonsense

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

"Wings" has the distinction of being the first movie to win the "Best Picture" Oscar. Many people don't rate it as high as I have, but I fully enjoyed it. I must admit that the story line away from the action scenes, is a little lame at times.Clara Bow who was at the top of her game at the time, heads up the cast. She plays Mary Preston who is in love with neighbor Jack Powell (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) who likes to work on cars instead. Jack along with poor little rich kid David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) are both in love with Sylvia Lewis (Jobyna Ralston) whom I assume is also a socialite. Guess who Sylia loves?When the U,S. enters WWI in 1917, the boys sign up for the Army Air Corps and are shipped out to France along with the film's comedy relief Herman Schwimph (Ed Brendel). Before leaving, Sylvia, who loves David, gives Jack her picture unwittingly, giving him a false impression.In France, Jack and David don't at first, get along due to their rivalry but become fast friends once the fighting starts. The two become ace pilots eventually winning a decoration from the French Government for their heroics. Mary, meanwhile has joined the Women's Corps driving a Red Cross truck in, you guessed it, France.After the intermission, we rejoin Jack and David for some fun and merriment in Paris. This is where the story gets a little ridiculous. Jack and Lt. Cameron (Roscoe Karns) are whooping it up amid "the bubbles" when , you guessed it again, Mary shows up. David is too drunk to recognize her so she dresses up in a flapper dress and takes him up to a room in a hotel. Unknown to Jack is the fact that he has been recalled to duty. As Mary is changing to her uniform, two MPs arrive and catch her with her pants down and assume the worst. She is sent back home as a result.And this is where the real action begins. Jack and David are mowing down the German planes when David is shot down and goes into hiding. Jack assumes that he has been killed. Jack soldiers on. Later David still very much alive, manages to steal a German plane and heads for the American lines. As luck would have it, Jack spots the German plane unaware that it is David at the controls and...............................................................................The aerial photography is simply amazing. The dogfights are realistically shown as are the ground war sequences. You have to remember that there were no computers back then so that these sequences were actually shot as you see them. The crashes and various explosions are as real as has ever been shown on the screen.Clara Bow was probably brought on board for her box office appeal because her role is definitely subordinate to that of Rogers and Arlen and the battle scenes. Rogers would go on to marry Mary Pickford in 1937 even though he was many years younger than she. They stayed married until Mary's death in 1979. Richard Arlen had been in movies since the early 20s. He would go on to a lengthy career at Paramount and keep working until his death in 1976.Watch for a young Gary Cooper in a brief role of Cadet White the doomed pilot, Henry B. Walthall as David's father and Hedda Hopper as Jack's mother.A true classic!

Released in 1927 - This silent-era film (with a story set during WW1) features some great battle scenes both in the air & on land. Its story is somewhat marred by actress Clara Bow who I found to be very annoying with her over-exaggerated facial expressions and cartoonish mannerisms.None of the other actors in "Wings" carried on in such an affected way as Clara Bow did. I can't figure out why she had a tendency to over-do it so much. It only made her look really silly. But I suspect that she thought that it was cute."Wings" is one of the very first mainstream films to show both male and female nudity. Though these scenes are very brief, it is still surprising to see this nakedness in such an early picture as "Wings". This film's real drawing-cards were its realistic battle scenes, which took up a large part of the story. Set in France, it's the aerial dogfight scenes, in particular, that were especially impressive to watch."Wings" has a somewhat overlong running time of 144 minutes.

Copyright 5 January 1929 by Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. Presented by Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky. New York opening of silent version at the Criterion: 12 August 1927. Sound effects and musical score (Movietone) version released 5 January 1929. Originally released in color tints. Portions of the film utilized Magnascope. Sound version is 13 reels, 12,267 feet, 136 minutes.SYNOPSIS: Two aviators are in love with the same girl.NOTES: Academy Award, Best Picture (defeating The Last Command, The Racket, Seventh Heaven and The Way of All Flesh). Academy Award, Special Engineering Effects, Roy Pomeroy (defeating The Jazz Singer and The Private Life of Helen of Troy).Despite its Academy Award for Best Picture, Wings did not even place in The Film Daily poll of U.S. film critics for the Ten Best Pictures of the year.Negative cost: around $2 million. Location filming near San Antonio, Texas.COMMENT: The madness of war graphically depicted in a $2 million production (the movie would cost at least forty times as much to reproduce today) that grabs all the senses and fully engages mind, heart and soul, "Wings" is perhaps Wellman's finest achievement. Not only is the action staged for real, using a truly staggering number of men and machines, but the story itself comes over with a dramatic urgency, a romantic poignancy, an almost horrifying sensitivity that is only slightly dissipated by the current 2017 prints that fail to incorporate either the red and blue laboratory tints or the big- picture MagnaScope dimensions of the original. (It's also a shame that Zamecnik's specially commissioned music score is not used but instead replaced with a new Wurlitzer score composed and performed by Gaylord Carter).Contemporary reviewers praised Clara Bow's lively performance but today her over-the-top vivacity seems just a little too forced for comfort. In a cameo role that lasts only a few minutes, it's Gary Cooper (already endowed with his familiar mannerisms) who shines super- bright. Charles "Buddy" Rogers comes over person-ably enough as the hero and really distinguishes himself in a counting bubbles scene in the Folies Bergere. Richard Arlen seems a bit gloomy as "the other man" but contrasts well enough with the continuously effervescent Rogers.Other roles, aside from Jobyna Ralston's attractive "other girl" (much is made of her in the plot, but she virtually disappears from the action itself and doesn't even figure in the climax), are comparatively small. For a moment there, it looks like El Brendel has been hired for comedy relief, but even he is wiped out for such an extraordinarily long stretch, it comes as a surprise when he suddenly pops back briefly at the climax.It is the small roles that often make the greatest atmospheric impression: callous Von Hartmann playing himself, Zalla Zarana as the sympathetic attendant who helps Bow into the spangled dress, vampy Arlette Marchal as the zesty Celeste, the slightly menacing Henry B. Walthall as the crippled Armstrong, Wellman's serene-faced wife and daughter as the mother and child at the crash site, and Wellman himself playing the dying soldier who exclaims, "Them buzzards are some good after all!"Technically, the picture stands up rather well, though long shots are so often employed that you really need the movie's original big- screen MagnaScope to present the numerous aerial dog-fights at their hideously terrifying best. Fortunately, the more intimate moments, such as the Folies Bergere scenes (where Wellman gets into stride with a rapid tracking shot that seems impossible to stage) still glow with a nervously compelling wartime vitality.

Wings was one of the first silent films that I've seen that was not done by Charlie Chaplin. Although I enjoyed this film, the number of inter titles drew me out of the film. What really distinguished Chaplin was his gift for visual story telling. Although a great film, the reliance on inter titles prevents it from aging as well as other silent movies from the era. Perhaps the most cinematically impressive part of this film were the dog fights. The air fights were totally believable, if you were able to look past some of the minor out of date effects. Overall, they added to the visual drama of the film. Definitely a historical piece of art.