Wings (1927 film)
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Wings (1927 film)
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1997.
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Wings is a 1927 American silent and synchronized sound film which won the first Academy Award for Best Picture. While the sound version of the film has no audible dialogue, it was released with a synchronized musical score with sound effects. The original soundtrack to the sound version is preserved at UCLA.
The film stars Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and Richard Arlen. Rogers and Arlen portray World War I combat pilots in a romantic rivalry over a woman. It was produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman, and released by Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation. Gary Cooper appears in a small role, which helped launch his career in Hollywood.
Why It Rocks
- Released just months after Charles Lindbergh's cross-Atlantic flight captivated the nation, Wings was also part of a boom in World War I-themed pictures that included The Big Parade and What Price Glory. As the top-grossing film of the year, it launched several careers, and was also the first to win an Oscar for what would later be called Best Picture.
- A fair amount of people are mostly aware of the film because it's the only silent film (from the silent era) to ever win the Academy Award for Best Picture, as well as the first film to ever that award in general. However, the film still holds interest on many levels. Considering it was made by a cast and crew of twenty somethings, one might be surprised that it wound up a film of any merit, let alone the impressive feature that it is.
- Paramount cast its most promising stars in the film:
- The project is listed as a starring vehicle for Clara Bow, but in many ways her part remains secondary to both the male leads, and the war itself. That being said it is still a wonderful example of Bow’s talents as it allows her to express both her dramatic and comedic skills equally and has one of the most memorable scenes of her career.
- Charles Rogers, usually billed as "Buddy Rogers," had attracted attention as the male lead in the W.C. Fields comedy So's Your Old Man, and learned to fly for his role as Jack Powell in this film, something his co-star Richard Arlen already knew how to do.
- Richard Arlen had his first important role in this film as David Armstrong, and it helped establish him as an action hero in a career that stretched into the 1960s.
- What truly sets this film in a category of its own for the time period from which it was made, is the handling and photography of the flying combat scenes. William Wellman had military combat experience as a flyer in World War I, and he may have been the only person who could have properly handled this film. It contains some of the most thrilling aerial footage every filmed.
- Wellman had strong dedication towards getting the aerial scenes to be as realistic as possible, which sometimes meant days without shooting anything. It also meant that the actors needed to learn to fly the planes. For a young director, with not much of a track record this was a risky move, but in the end it was the correct one, because not only did Wellman insist that the aerial dogfights had to be shot against a backdrop of clouds, they needed to make some technological improvements to properly shoot them in the first place. The main one being they needed motorized cameras to be mounted on the planes, so that the cameramen (led by Harry Perry) could man the planes flying alongside for long shots, and the actors would turn on the cameras mounted on the front and back of the planes they were flying for close-ups and POV shots. The results were unparalleled for the time.
- For many viewers this was the closest they would come to experiencing flying. Wellman gave them everything, from the thrill of take-off to the exhilaration of flying above clouds to the terror of a crash landing. The first dogfight lasts some ten minutes, carefully choreographed so that viewers can tell which side is which. Some of the footage captures the same images that would be seen in war documentaries: bombs dropping on targets, gunners hunched over their sights, the horizon tilting woozily as a pilot pulls out of a turn.
- Another reason the film works so well, is because Wellman has a deep, personal understanding of the story. Having been a pilot in World War I, he was able to convey the brutal reality of war that he witnessed. Despite the PG-13 rating, this film depicts many deaths, such as a man being crushed by a tank. The film does not glorify war, which is clear in the scene where the protagonist Powell shoots down his own friend because the latter is flying in a German plane.
- A major special feature of Wings that has never been recreated was a technique called Magnascope, which would increase the size of the screen and was used for the aerial battle sequences. A standard 15 foot by 20 foot screen would expand out to 25 foot by 40 foot. This required theatres showing the film to employ a third projector with a special shutter, intermittent and lens configuration that would be used to project only the Magnascope sequences.
- Another instance of truly remarkable film engineering comes in the making of the “café dolly shot,” which features the camera moving through different tables at a café until finally reaching our protagonist. The shot itself leads the audience to the protagonists in linear motion, while showcasing the vivid nature of the party and contrasting it with the stern nature of the protagonist. It keeps the audience focused until we arrive at the final frame.
Bad Qualities
- Narratively the film is not much beyond a couple of romantic love triangles set against the back drop of World War I. For the most part, the characters are very simplistic: Mary Preston is the flirty next-door neighbor to Jack Powell, who ignores her because he’s chasing Sylvia Lewis, oblivious to the fact that Sylvia Lewis and David Armstrong are in love. That’s about as far as character development gets in the film, a fault of Wellman as much as the scriptwriters.
- While Clara Bow's role in the film as Mary Preston was designed to show off her acting abilities, it echoed her other roles, only without her characteristic humor and optimism. Her performance is limited to brash exuberance, tearful gazes, and hoydenish jocularity, a combination of tomboy, Madonna, and whore that was impossible for her to play convincingly. She could act, which she proved some of her other films, but she couldn't compete in a film about machines.
- Rogers does a decent performance as Jack Powell, but he has an insistent energy that can be exhausting. Similar to Clara Bow, he's shown that he can be a talented actor and a lot more subtle in some of his other films, but here he was asked to play over-the-top right from the start.
- William Wellman's overall direction isn't the best either.
- Action is repeated in some cuts, while details about the characters’ homes and lives that could help ground the film are largely absent.
- When war is declared, Wellman basically stops the film to introduce some weary ethnic humor in the form of Herman Schwimpf (played by El Brendel), one of the most difficult of acquired tastes from the period.
- The viewers have to wait a full 40 minutes before the first flying sequence.
- Modern audiences will likely never get to experience the total extensiveness of special effects employed in the film. For years all versions of the film were missing the special coloring that was used to highlight the fire from the plane crashes, and the bullets being fired from the planes themselves. This coloring was in addition to the tinting that was employed throughout. Also there was a special sound synchronization machine designed by General Electric that was installed in certain theatres to provide the sounds of the machine guns, and the airplanes. Both of these effects have been added digitally to a BluRay release of the film, but no 35mm prints currently exist that contain these two effects.
Trivia
- As mentioned above, Wings was the first Best Picture Academy Award winner.