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Fight & Flight: WINGS and the Aviation War Film

I finally had a chance to see Paramount’s restoration of the studio’s 1927 silent classic, WINGS, on DVD – which is most famous today as the first film to receive an Academy Award for Best Picture.

It’s probably the best example of a sub-genre of war films that focus specifically on aviation and the air force. WINGS is both a stunning action epic as well as a beautifully-crafted work of silent screen art, representing the first major achievement for its director, William A. Wellman, who would have a long career directing a very wide variety of films in Hollywood, of all kinds of genres.

But it was Wellman’s experience as a flyer that would make WINGS a highly personal project for its director, and would give it the sense of realism that still makes an impression on audiences.

WINGS features both some of the most impressive aerial sequences ever committed to film, and remains a thrilling and moving war epic 85 years since it was first released. It would also provide the model for every aerial war epic that would come after it.

Paramount was banking on WINGS to be its big blockbuster of 1927, and certainly spared no expense in bringing it to the screen.

For one thing, Clara Bow, Paramount’s leading female star of the late ‘20s (and who would star in the infamous IT the same year), was cast in the starring role of Mary Preston, with Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen as Jack Powell and David Armstrong, the two young flyers. It also marked the first significant screen appearance of Gary Cooper, who appears only briefly, but memorably, as a cadet at the training camp who is killed early on in a crash.

Additionally, the studio enlisted the help of the US government to bring WINGS to the screen in its full scale. WINGS was shot largely in San Antonio, Texas, where Wellman and crew were able to take advantage of the troops and equipment provided at Fort Sam Houston, a location which appears in several scenes in the film.

WINGS follows the adventures of the two young flyers as they enter basic training together and eventually go to war. In addition to the thrilling sky battles, Wellman emphasized the personal nature of war, especially by focusing on the friendship between Jack (Rogers) and David (Arlen) as he moves the film toward its tragic climax. While the film does provide an indictment of war, it is first and foremost a romantic drama, something Wellman emphasizes in its final moments.

In this sense, WINGS is reminiscent of King Vidor’s THE BIG PARADE (1925), which had been a massive hit for MGM two years earlier. Another landmark war film, THE BIG PARADE did not shy away from presenting the horrors of war, but ultimately presents its story as a romantic drama set against the backdrop of battle.

It was not until perhaps Lewis Milestone’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930) that the genre would dispense with the romantic aspect completely and offer a completely harrowing and uncompromising perspective on the subject.

What really set WINGS apart, though, was in its creative method of filming the aerial sequences.

Instead of relying on stunt doubles and stock footage, the actors learned to fly the planes themselves (Arlen already had experience from serving in World War I), with the cameras mounted on the cockpit facing them, to provide a heightened sense of realism.

Because the film was unencumbered by dialogue, the cameras were free to fly along with the actors, capturing footage from unprecedented angles which was tightly edited into sequences maximizing the danger of the air battles. In this sense, WINGS serves as a perfect example of the kind of pure visual spectacle that only the silent film could provide.

To add to it, some scenes were presented in Magnascope, which offered an early version of widescreen, and original presentations were accompanied by an orchestral score along with sound effects of the planes and other battle sounds!

WINGS turned out to be the hit that Paramount was hoping for. Its success spawned other films about aerial warfare, including THE DAWN PATROL, an early talkie directed by Howard Hawks in 1930, and perhaps most famously, HELL’S ANGELS, an extravagant affair produced and directed by Howard Hughes which also launched the career of Jean Harlow who – like Clara Bow in the 20s – would become a leading sex symbol of the early 1930s.

THE DAWN PATROL (which is more commonly known today by its reissue title for television, “Flight Commander”, to avoid confusion with the 1938 remake) suffers from the restrictions of early sound film, despite expert direction by Hawks. HELL’S ANGELS overcomes that problem somewhat, having been shot largely as a silent and converted to sound later, which allowed for more freedom in the camera movement than usual, though this also results in an uneven film. Added to that is the fact that it lacks the dramatic power of Wellman’s film, mostly resulting from its lack of strong characters and too many dull segments when the airplanes aren’t on-screen (Wellman’s film, on the other hand, manages to maintain the viewer’s investment in the plot and characters through all of its 144 minute running time).

It is interesting to compare WINGS to the films that came after it.

So often, when a film is profoundly groundbreaking and influential in the way WINGS has been, it can seem less impressive in retrospect, when audiences have become familiar and even bored with its innovations by seeing them imitated countless times.

WINGS, however, holds up even after all of the imitations over the years, because of the sincerity of its story, and Wellman’s clear commitment to the subject matter.

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