Advertisement
Join Spout
Sign in
you
You
Take a tour of spout.com
Join Spout!
Sign in
Learn more about us
Downloads
movies
Browse movies
Now in theaters
Coming soon to theaters
New on DVD
Coming soon to DVD
Trailers
Genres
Newsletters
Recent Spoutblog posts
FilmCouch
Film festival coverage
Community movie buzz
Community activity just now
Recent community reviews
Community tags
Recent lists
Get recommendation with SpoutMind
Browse store
mavens
Browse Movie Mavens
Recent maven reviews
View all mavens
Top bloggers
Top listers
Busy people
Search people
What's a maven?
communities
Browse Communities
Recent discussions
Recent list activity
Popular groups
Most movies
Most talkative
Wings (1927)
Want to see it?
Seen it?
0
1
2
3
4
5
Rate this movie.
Want to buy it?
Write a review
Discuss it
Add to lists
Recommend it
Get recommendations
Rent it, watch it, find it
Advertisement
Synopsis & reviews
Related movies
Cast & crew
Synopsis
Wings, the first feature film to win an Academy Award, tends to disappoint a little when seen today. Too much time is afforded the wheezy old plotline about two World War I aviators (Buddy Rogers, Richard Arlen) in love with the same Red Cross nurse (Clara Bow), while the comedy relief of El Brendel is decidedly not to everyone's taste. But during the aerial "dogfight" sequences, the film is something else again: a grand-scale spectacular, the likes of which has never been duplicated, not even by more expensive efforts like
Hell's Angels
(1930) and
The Blue Max
(1965). Twenty-eight-year-old director William Wellman, himself a wartime aviator, was fortunate enough to have the full cooperation of the US War department at his disposal (even though his legendary temper nearly lost him that cooperation on more than one occasion!) Brilliantly handled though the aerial scenes may be, they are matched by the Earthbound combat sequences, including the now-famous shot of a long trench caving in on hundreds of unfortunate doughboys. Oh, we forgot about the storyline. Well, here goes: Rogers and Arlen hate each other during basic training, grow to like each other, fall out again over Clara Bow's affections, Bow sacrifices her own nursing career to save a drunken Rogers from disgrace, Rogers goes on a rampage when he believes his pal Arlen has been killed, inadvertently shoots down Arlen while decimating the German air corps, is reunited with Bow, The End. Wrapped up in nurse's garb throughout most of the film, the ebullient Clara Bow is permitted a sequence in which, disguised as a Parisian floozie while trying to rescue a revelling Rogers, she displays a great deal of epidermis. One of the film's chief claims to fame is its "introduction" of Gary Cooper (who'd actually been in films since the early 1920s), in a brief but crucial role as veteran flyer with a cheerily fatalistic attitude. When originally released, Wings included a sequence lensed in the wide-screen "Magnascope" process; even when seen "flat", however, the film contains some of the best flying sequences ever captured on celluloid. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Cast
Richard Arlen
David Armstrong
Clara Bow
Mary Preston
El Brendel
Patrick O'Brien
Gary Cooper
Cadet White
Julia Swayne Gordon
David's mother
Hedda Hopper
Mrs. Powell
George Irving
Mr. Powell
Arlette Marchal
Celeste
Jobyna Ralston
Sylvia Lewis
"Gunboat" Smith
Sergeant
Richard Tucker
Air Commander
Charles "Buddy" Rogers
John "Jack" Powell
Production Crew
B.P. Schulberg
Associate Producer
Alfred Williams
Cinematographer
Bert Baldridge
Cinematographer
E. Burton Steene
Cinematographer
Harry Perry
Cinematographer
L. Guy Wilky
Cinematographer
J.S. Zamecnik
Composer (Music Score)
Edith Head
Costume Designer
William Wellman
Director
E. Lloyd Sheldon
Editor
Lucien Hubbard
Editor
Norman Z. McLeod
First Assistant Director
Julian Johnson
Intertitle Writer
Lucien Hubbard
Producer
Hope Loring
Screenwriter
Louis D. Lighton
Screenwriter
John Monk Saunders
Short Story Author
John Monk Saunders
Short Story Author
Ballard MacDonald
Songwriter
Carl von Hartmann
Special Effects
Dick Grace
Stunts
Year: 1927
Runtime: 139
Country: USA
MPAA Rating:
Category: Feature
Genre
Action
Adventure
War
Produced by
Paramount
Awards
1927-28 - Best Picture - Academy
1997 - U.S. National Film Registry - Library of Congress
Privacy
Safety
Legal
Report bad behavior
© 2008 Spout LLC. Portions of content provided by All Movie Guide.