Genre:
Drama, War, Romance
BD/DVD Release Date:
27th January 2014 (UK)
Distribution:
Eureka! Distribution
Rating:
PG
Director:
William A. Wellman
Cast:
Clara Bow, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Richard Arlen
Buy:WINGS (Masters of Cinema) (Dual Format Blu-ray & DVD)
William A. Wellman’s silent epic will forever be remembered as the winner of the first ever Academy Award for Best Picture. But this, in itself, can be seen as a bit of a misnomer. For 1927 had two Best Picture categories at the Academy Awards, one for Best Picture, Production, and the other for Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production. Wings won for Production while the far superior Sunrise, a Song of Two Humans by F.W. Murnau won the award for Unique and Artistic Production, an award that to my ears, but not to those of the Oscar historians, sounds like the better award of the two.
But, to put the Academy Award nit-picking to one side, Wings winning of the Best Picture, Production award could not be more apt as the no expenses spared special effects and superb art direction are the films only saving grace. I say this because the story itself is over-simplistic, overly sentimental, and just the most tiresome type of straightforward, melodramatic Hollywood weepie type storytelling you could possibly imagine. To illustrate how straightforward the storyline is, I am now going to give away the films plot in full.
Mary lives next door to Jack, the boy she loves; she jovially helps him fix up his automobile. She paints a shooting star on the side and says, “D’you know what you can do when you see a shooting star? Well… you can kiss the girl you love.” “Maybe I will,” Jack responds. She purses her lips in anticipation. Jack, however, unaware of this, drives off in search of Sylvia, the gorgeous girl visiting from the big city. She is the one he loves. Unbeknownst to Jack, Sylvia loves another, the town’s rich boy, David. David loves her too. Then war breaks out. Both boys sign up for the air force. Jack visits Sylvia to say his goodbyes and mistakenly takes a keepsake locket meant for David. Then off they go to war.
Jack and David are both stationed at the same barracks. They don’t get along. Eventually a fight breaks out and by the end of it they are the best of friends. Jack still believes that Sylvia loves him. David, however, knows this not to be true but keeps it from his new best friend. Then off to France. They both see combat. Lots of combat. Then Mary makes an appearance in France. She finds Jack, drunk and in Paris on leave. He doesn’t recognise her. She is sent back home. Then comes the “Big Push” and the war nears its end. Jack and David have a fall out over Sylvia’s keepsake and head off into battle. Jack returns. David doesn’t. A distraught Jack rushes heedlessly into the next battle. He shoots down an enemy plane. Flying it was David, who had survived against all odds and escaped from behind enemy lines. He dies. Jack returns home.
Upon returning home Jack catches up with Mary. They sit together on the hood of the car they jovially fixed at the beginning of the film. A shooting star flies across the night’s sky. Jack turns to Mary and says, “Do you know what you can do when you see a shooting star?” Yes, she nods, “You can kiss the girl you love.” They kiss. The film ends.
Now, as classical melodrama goes, the story is nice enough but the film spends two and a half hours to tell it. But what is it all for? The only themes I can discern are that of luck and unrequited love which pop up throughout the film and then there is that overwhelming sense of patriotism that is constantly thrown at the audience. And this is the films biggest problem; it does not know what it wants to be. If Wellman wanted a big patriotic war epic then fine that is what he should have made. And if he wanted to make a beautiful melodramatic weepie about unrequited love then that would have been fine too. But as it stands the film is an epic mess.