1927-28 (1st) Academy Awards Outstanding Picture Winner
Wings, a romance
and adventure epic set among WWI pilots, is the pinnacle of silent era
spectacle and storytelling. Paramount executives were skeptical about hiring
William Wellman to direct what would be the studio’s big road show picture for
1927. Wellman had been a flier during World War I and had seen combat, but he
was younger and less experienced than the other directors in Paramount’s
stable. In the end, he was able to convince Paramount producer and executive,
Jesse Lasky, that he was the right man for the job. According to Welllman’s
son, his father said to Lasky, “I’ll make this the best goddamn picture this
studio’s ever had.” “Wild Bill” Wellman did just that and made one of the last
great films of the silent era.
What sets Wings
apart from any other war film, then or now, is its astonishing aerial
sequences. For the close ups in the cockpits, actors Charles “Buddy” Rodgers
and Richard Arlen actually flew their own airplanes. Arlen had flying experience
from WWI, but Buddy Rodgers had to learn how to fly. A number of adventurous
stunt pilots flew planes for the dogfight scenes. The planes fly very close to
each other and dive straight towards each other and towards the ground. The
fire from plane explosions and machine gun barrels are in color, which was
painted in later. The shots of planes crashing to the ground are as real as
they can be. In one shot, a stunt pilot broke his neck when the plane did not
hit the ground in the way intended. The pilot survived and returned to the
shoot six weeks later. The U.S. Army cooperated in the production by supplying hundreds
of planes, tanks, pilots, and soldiers to be extras. A field was bombarded with
real artillery to give it the right look of a battlefield. Perhaps most
important of all, Wellman knew that the planes would only appear to whiz and
zip through the air at incredible speeds if the sky was filled with big puffy
white clouds to provide perspective for the audience. He halted production for
33 days waiting for clouds to appear over Kelly Field outside of San Antonio,
TX to shoot the aerial combat scenes, much to the chagrin of Paramount
executives. The wait proved to be a wise decision. The scenes in the air are
thrilling and beautiful and you feel that the sky is full of peril. The final
air battle sequence is incredibly elaborate; everything on screen looks hectic and
dangerous.
The plot of the movie is about the friendship of Jack
(Rodgers) and David (Arlen), two young men from the same town that dream of
flying. Unbeknownst to each other, they are in love with the same girl from
back home, Sylvia. Clara Bow plays Mary, Jack’s neighbor who harbors an
unrequited affection for him. She enlists as an ambulance driver and crosses
paths with Jack again in Europe. The romance in Wings is its weakest element, probably because it was added into
the script last, to give Paramount’s biggest star, Clara Bow, a role in their
big-budget roadshow production. Bow receives top billing and is appealing as
the sweet girl-next-door Mary, but she did not like her role. She thought her
character was merely a decoration and said Wings
was “a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie." She
still gave a good performance along with the rest of the cast, both major and
minor players. One notable standout is Gary Cooper, as Cadet White. He only has
one scene early in the movie, but it demonstrated his considerable screen presence
and launched his career.
Wings has a few cinematic
“firsts” aside from its Outstanding Picture/Best Picture win. Wings was the first widely released film
to feature, albeit very briefly, nudity—nude men are briefly seen from behind
in a medical exam room at the recruitment office. Later in the film, a pair of
military policemen walk in on Clara Bow changing and she is topless for a
second. Wings is also the first of
only four films to win Best Picture without also having its director nominated
(the other films are: Grand Hotel, Driving Miss Daisy, and Argo).
For years Wings
was thought to be a lost film until a print was found in the archives of the
Cinematheque Francaise in Paris. It was selected to be preserved in the
National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1997. In 2012, it was
restored by Paramount Pictures. I am so glad that Wings was not lost and is readily available to watch on DVD because
this is a film that everyone should see not only because of its place in film
history, but also because it is an exciting and thrilling movie. It showed
audiences something they had never seen before and presents flying as a
dazzling adventure and also a seriously dangerous adventure. Wings leans heavily on spectacle and
melodrama, but it is not an outdated antique. The story is simple, but when
combined with technical mastery Wings
becomes a film that would influence numerous great war films yet to come.
Nominee: Paramount Famous-Lasky
Producer: Lucien HubbardDirector: William Wellman
Screenplay: Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton, story by John
Monk Saunders
Cast: Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Richard Arliss
Release Date: August 12th, 1927
Total Nominations: 2, including Outstanding Picture
Wins: Outstanding Picture, Engineering Effects-Roy Pomeroy
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