Wings

 

I’m gonna have to be honest right out of the gate when it comes to examining the 1927 Best Picture winner Wings. While I find the war drama and the aerial stunt work first rate and exciting, the story that interests me more is the relationship between Jack Powell (Charles “Buddy” Rogers) and Mary Preston (Clara Bow). It is Mary pining for Jack all the while he is obsessed with Sylvia (Jobyna Ralston) while she is in love with David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) that keeps the story moving for me, not the ongoing battles of World War I. That is not to say the war scenes are disinteresting to me, just that I am more invested in the personal dramas than in the overall stakes. This is in large part due to Clara Bow who, as Hollywood’s “It girl” had sex appeal that was perfectly realized at a time before the studios were forced to self-censor themselves and hide all that magnetism behind a veil of morality. While she survived the purge that came when films transitioned into sound she didn’t fare nearly as well under the Hays Code, burning out in 1947 and retiring from acting and the public life at a relatively young age. She was at her absolute best when she was young and vibrant and oozed sex appeal.  Watching her in Wings it is apparent how she got that “It girl” moniker.

I first saw Wings in the late 1990’s as part of a goal to view every Academy Awarded Best Picture winner. At that time I knew nothing about it except for a brief clip shown at the 1998 Oscars celebrating 70 years of the Academy Awards. This clip showed just some airplane stunts and dog fighting so I knew going in that it would be a film about the great war. What I remembered most from my first viewing was the opening scenes of Jack and Mary working on a car and that at some point she enlists in the army, too, as a driver. I watched the film just the once and then moved on to other films as I was in a big hurry to complete the entire list and didn’t give any of them a chance to resonate. I have since re-watched Wings a handful of times and have read plenty about it, gaining a greater appreciation for what went into making it. I was also surprised to realize that at the time I was first discovering this film its lead actor, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, was still alive. He has since passed on but he lived to see this film get rediscovered long after it was assumed all the prints were lost. The version I watched today is a restoration of that print, color coded like it was originally shown, complete with blue and orange cells and hand painted gunfire, but with newly added sound effects and music. Apparently the original audio track is only available to hear in the UCLA Archives should I wish to venture all the way down to southern California to hear them. Maybe when I visit the archives to watch The White Parade I will also revisit Wings again just to see it as it was originally meant to be.

Wings tells two intertwined stories. The first, and the one it opens up with, is a love story as old as time. Jack loves Sylvia who loves David. Mary loves Jack. When war breaks out Jack and David both enlist wanting to become fighter pilots. Sylvia preps a photograph of herself to give to David with a love note written on the back and enclosed in a locket. Jack shows up to say his goodbyes and sees the locket, mistaking it as a gift for himself. She is too kindhearted to tell him the truth and thus lets him go off believing it was meant for him. David, knowing the truth, has a rivalry with Jack that builds up to out-right hostility during army training. The tension breaks, though, when they hash it out during hand to hand combat and the two become great friends, staying together throughout the various battles in the sky. Mary, having learned to drive from Jack as the two of them helped build and repair his car at home, The Shooting Star, uses that training to enlist as an ambulance driver in the war efforts in France. She never gives up hope that someday Jack will realize the two were meant to be together. 

The second story and the one that takes up the bulk of the screen time is the war itself. Jack and David come from very different backgrounds. Jack is from a working class family. He has managed to put together a motor vehicle but only through his own labor. David’s family is wealthy. This doesn’t make him any less of a likable character, though, even though he is introduced looking bored and disinterested while riding a tandem swing with Sylvia. He starts out being more stereotypical rich kid but when he enlists in the army there is a touching moment between him and his mother when he finds a little toy bear he loved as a child and takes it with him as a good luck token. It is never in doubt that this is a family that is close and loves each other and that economical reasons are the only thing that differentiates the two young men. Their rivalry during their army training days is mostly played up for laughs in scenes like when Jack uses the calisthenics course as an opportunity to repeatedly smash David’s hat into the grass. 

Once they are sent overseas and into the war zone we get the razzle dazzle of aerial shots that were amazing to watch back in 1927. Director William A. Wellman knew that planes flying against a clear sky looked bland and unrealistic. Consequently he held up production for weeks waiting for the Texas skies to get cloudy just so things looked realistic and to scale. The results speak for themselves but Paramount Studios were getting antsy waiting on shots that were not getting done while they paid for people to sit around waiting on the weather. Watching those flight scenes now, knowing what filming limitations existed in the 1920’s, it is crazy what they pulled off. These scenes were not accomplished with miniatures but actual planes in the air, often with cameras mounted right on the wings and controlled by the pilots who also had to act and stay airborne and safe all at the same time. It takes a special kind of daredevil pilot to get some of these shots and perform the aerial acrobats seen here and apparently Paramount hired all of them to make it happen.

There is simply no substitution in this era for the real thing. Had Wellman relied on models and the primitive effects available at the time there would be no excitement to the aerial battles. Without that a good chunk of this picture would fall completely flat as so much of it relies on that spectacle. Consider the scene where Mervale is being bombed by a giant Gotha, the mightiest bombing plane in Germany’s air force. Jack, Dave and others are flying in to deal with the Gotha and its two escort planes. The camera follows the planes as they dart in and out, firing on each other in a sort of mid-air ballet that is both graceful and terrifying. Audiences in 1927 would have been amazed at this scene and even now, in an era where CGI can make anything come to life, seeing the real deal is still more intense and dazzling.

The drama down on earth isn’t nearly as exciting as that which is going on in the sky, though. It is here that the story runs into its biggest hurdles. We get that Jack and Dave have become good friends but there’s very little to support this beyond the boxing scene that begins that friendship. They have moments together but nothing that really builds up why their friendship is so strong and why David would continue to allow Jack to believe Sylvia is in love with him when she actually loves David. David must know that if they both made it home after the war this would come up and have to be dealt with. At one point, as David has gotten the feeling that he ins’t coming back from his next mission, the picture of Sylvia falls out of Jack’s locket, exposing the message on the back. Before Jack can see it, David picks it up and tears it to pieces. Jack is naturally upset at first but his friendship with David overrides that emotion almost immediately. I have read more recent synopsis of this film that want to read homosexual undertones to their friendship and I honestly can say I do not see that at all. It would have helped me understand this friendship better had that friendship been better developed, though. 

The ending of the film is a real tragedy. David, knowing somehow that he will not return from his next mission, gives his lucky bear to Jack to bring home to his parents. The mission goes south and David ends up shot down but still alive. He steals an enemy plane in a desperate attempt to get back across the border into friendly airspace. Instead, he gets shot down by Jack who thinks he’s just another enemy airplane. This will haunt Jack for the rest of his life and he will have to return the toy bear to David’s parents and face them knowing he was the one that killed their son. While he is home being celebrated for the war hero that he is, David’s parents, as well as Sylvia, can be seen away from the celebration quietly crying. Jack, now aware of the message on the back of Sylvia’s picture, has realized that he does love Mary and the two of them end the film in each others arms, sealing their love with a kiss underneath a shooting star.

A common criticism of this film is that it runs too long. At nearly 2 1/2 hours in length, those not accustomed to watching silent dramas may find it to be too much. I have never felt that way. I watched it this morning for the fifth or sixth time and it still flows easily and is never boring. The plane sequences are beautiful and awe-inspiring to watch but the film is much more than just those battle flights. The personal stories are also interesting and it was a stroke of genius that screen writers Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton found a way to keep Mary in the story in a way that felt organic. When she is forcibly discharged over a simple misunderstanding it was heartbreaking even though all we really see her do in the war is drive around. We understand just how devastating it is for her to be sent home in disgrace for something she was innocent of. Clara Bow sells the sweetness of Mary, the childishness and coyness of her character in the earlier scenes, and the more adult emotions of her character later when she is in Paris during the war. So much of the emotional payoff in the end is dependent on her performance and she is just perfect in it. She is the real star of the film, despite having the least amount of screen time of the three leads, and she steals the show every time she’s in it.

Wings is the only true silent picture to win the Best Picture Academy Award, despite the anomaly that is The Artist in 2011. The Artist has sound moments including the entire final scene making it more of a silent/talkie hybrid whereas Wings was filmed to be a fully silent picture with nothing more than a piano score to accompany it. When talking pictures began to be more en vogue, though, it was redubbed with sound effects and an updated score. That is the version that is readily available today, alongside an even newer version with an updated orchestral score. Whichever version you watch you’ll find a film rich with personal drama, action and romance, all the elements needed to make a great film. The only thing standing in the way of this being among the best of the best is the lack of scenes cementing the friendship between Jack and David. It needed something like a moment when one saved the other’s life to really establish that bond. What it does have is great, though, and it remains one of the best silent films of all time. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Outstanding Picture: Paramount Famous Lasky

Best Engineering Effects: Roy Pomeroy

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Release Date: August 12, 1927

Running Time: 144 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Richard Arlen, and Gary Cooper

Directed By: William A. Wellman