Only Angels Have Wings

This movie makes much more sense when you put it in the context of early talkie World War I flying movies like Hawks' Today We Live or The Dawn Patrol or

Dieterle's The Last Flight (starring, not coincidentally, Richard Barthelmess). By 1939, with another war looming, audiences were long since sick of such tales, but by resetting the tale at a South American airport (where Cary Grant runs a mail service which is in danger of losing its contract), it was just barely possible to come up with a credible situation where Grant could again order his flyers to their deaths, and where death would be greeted with the callousness that

comes from knowing you're probably next and your best friend will eat your

steak for you. The reviewers who say Grant doesn't play it serious enough here are exactly missing the point-- his seemingly breezy, actually brittle facade IS the Lost Generation attitude, straight out of The Sun Also Rises.

This is one of the great tough romances, whose real romance is with death itself, which needless to say makes it several steps darker than Hawks' superficially similar To Have and Have Not, let alone Rio Bravo (which reproduces its main

characters almost exactly-- Grant as John Wayne, Arthur/Angie Dickinson as the woman trying to get into the boy's club, Barthelmess/Dean Martin as the guy

with a guilty past of failure, and Mitchell as the guy who age is catching up with/ Walter Brennan, old age fully caught up). In gleaming black and white on the DVD, the foggy, fake studio set and the silver skies might be the dreams of a pilot in the instant before his crash. Too grim a bite of caviar for the general, perhaps, but a testament for a generation that saw more than it could put on film, and one of the greatest works of art to sneak out of the studio system under

disguise of glamorous entertainment.

This film is relentlessly male and relentlessly American. It functions brilliantly within the Hawksian "system" where male bonding is key, and where Woman is an outsider. Where romance is a minor part of life and where love is expressed through symbols and not through language. The group of professionals and their easy, jocular interaction is the beating heart of this film and all the group scenes are brilliantly directed. I also like the element of screwball comedy (a genre in which Hawks is one of the few masters) which presents itself in Grant and Arthur's "coffee" scene. It shows how much Hawks trusts his actors and his material in that he knows that such changes of tone can strengthen, rather than weaken, the key drama. I love this film even though its presentation of the world is not the one I'm the most sympathetic to. The film is not incredibly strong in psychological nuances - not when compared to directors like Sirk, Fuller, Welles, N. Ray, etc...and the basic tone is that of a stoicism which occasionally cracks (slightly) under pressure, but which almost immediately reestablishes itself. It's an attractive world view, but not one I'm incredibly comfortable with. There is no place here for ambiguity - not on any deep, non - localized level. I've been reading some Hawks interviews, and I now understand why Hawks was uncomfortable with being labeled an "artist". His attitude towards films and film-making is clearly the same as the attitude of the men in this film towards their work and their lives (and deaths). It's simple: you're either good enough or you're not, and you're only as good as your last flight. This identification between the man (Hawks) and his production (Only Angels Have Wings) helps to illuminate the greatness of the film, but it also explains its emotional and aesthetic limitations.

The best film that Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings can be compared to is Hawks's own Ceiling Zero. The former was adapted from the stage play by Spig Wead and for whatever reason Warner Brothers did not put in the kind of production values the A list cast from that film should have warranted. In my review for IMDb I said it was a photographed stage play.

Hawks seems to have made the corrections for the deficiencies of Ceiling Zero in this film. First of all he wrote the story for Only Angels Have Wings and made sure to put in enough action and he took the action away from the control room of that small airline in an unnamed South American country. He also cast the leads against type, Cary Grant as a cynical, existential Bogart like hero and Jean Arthur as the wise cracking show girl stranded in the tropics. A part that Rita Hayworth would play to perfection later on.

Rita's in this one as well, in the first substantial part in an A picture. She plays the wife of disgraced flier Richard Barthelmess and one of Cary Grant's old flames. According to a recent biography of Jean Arthur, she and Rita did not get along so well. Both of them are retiring types and each thought the other was being snooty to her. Arthur found that out later on and was far more cordial as was Rita. Arthur was also upset that the future glamor queen of America would get all the notice. Rita sure got enough of it.

But there were plaudits all around. Howard Hawks got great performances out of Grant and Arthur, expanding the range of both these talented people. Only Angels Have Wings is both a good character study and has a lot of drama as well.

And Cary Grant was far more successful at a Bogart type role than Bogey was in doing Sabrina.

Geoff Carter is the head of a small run down air freight company in Barranca, one of his best pilots (and friend) is killed, but this is merely only one of the problems he has to deal with as ex flames, potential new sweethearts, and dissension in the camp, all fuse together to test him to the limit.

Howard Hawks was the perfect man for this film because of his aviation background, the result is a very well crafted character study set in a very small locale. Looking at it from the outside you would think that the film was lining up to be a soft soap romantic fable, but here the emotion is channelled into a sort of character bravado that is flawed - yet something that makes for a viewing experience that draws you in deep with the finely etched characters.

The cast are on fine form. Cary Grant gets to flex his non comedic muscles with great results as Carter, the film relies on Grant to glue the story together which he does with great aplomb. Jean Arthur & Rita Hayworth are the girls in amongst this strongly male orientated story, and it's a testament to both of the ladies ability that they don't get bogged down by all the macho heroism pouring out in the plot. Smart camera work and exciting aerial sequences further up the quality that is dotted within the piece, and were it not for some terribly twee dialogue, Only Angels Have Wings would surely be ranked as a classic of the 1930s. As it is, it's a wonderfully involving film that shows Hawks at his most humane. 8/10

To quote to the movie cliché on the back of the VHS cover, this is old-time adventure, "the kind they don't make anymore."

Well, they've always made good adventure stories through the years but you get the message: it's simply a good, solid story done well on film .

What puts this a notch above other adventure tales of its day are: 1 - excellent cinematography; 2 - interesting aerial scenes with neat-looking planes flying in the fog and around and above the treacherous Andes Mountains; 3 - a top- notch cast featuring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, Richard Barthelmess, Thomas Mitchell, Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman, John Carroll and Noah Beery Jr., and 4 - a story that is generally interesting.

I say "generally" because there are a few dry spots, mainly Arthur's continued pining over Grant, but most of it fun to watch and it gets you involved in the story. Ruman and Barthelmess were especially good in their supporting roles. Hayworth's role, one of her first, was not that much.

In all, a solid adventure-romance tale, and I'm shocked it gets so little attention on this website, with under 20 reviews as of my writing.