| Wings | |
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Film poster |
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| Directed by | William A. Wellman |
| Produced by | Lucien Hubbard Adolph Zukor Jesse L. Lasky B. P. Schulberg Otto Kahn[1][2] |
| Written by | Story: John Monk Saunders Screenplay: Hope Loring Louis D. Lighton Titles: Julian Johnson |
| Starring | Clara Bow Charles "Buddy" Rogers Richard Arlen Gary Cooper |
| Music by | Uncredited: J.S. Zamecnik |
| Cinematography | Harry Perry |
| Editing by | E. Lloyd Sheldon Uncredited: Lucien Hubbard |
| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
| Release date(s) | August 12, 1927 |
| Running time | 141 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | Silent film English intertitles |
| Budget | US$2,000,000 (est.)[3] |
Wings is a 1927 silent film about World War I fighter pilots, produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman and released by Paramount Pictures. Wings was the first film, and the only silent film, to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.[4] Wings stars Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and Richard Arlen. Gary Cooper appears in a role which helped launch his career in Hollywood and also marked the beginning of his affair with Clara Bow. Ironically, out of all of the lead performances in the film, it was Gary Cooper's supporting role which would shoot him to stardom.[5]
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Jack Powell (Rogers) and David Armstrong (Arlen) are rivals in the same small American town, both vying for the attentions of pretty Sylvia Lewis (Ralston). Jack fails to realize that "the girl next door", Mary Preston (Bow), is desperately in love with him. The two young men both enlist to become combat pilots in the Air Service. When they leave for training camp, Jack mistakenly believes Sylvia prefers him. She actually prefers David and lets him know about her feelings, but is too kindhearted to turn down Jack's affection.
Jack and David are billeted together. Their tent mate is Cadet White (Gary Cooper), but their acquaintance is all too brief; White is killed in an air crash the same day. Undaunted, the two men endure a rigorous training period, where they go from being enemies to best friends. Upon graduating, they are shipped off to France to fight the Germans.
Mary joins the war effort by becoming an ambulance driver. She later learns of Jack's reputation as an ace and encounters him while on leave in Paris. She finds him, but he is too drunk to recognize her. She puts him to bed, but when two Military Police barge in while she is innocently changing from a borrowed dress back into her uniform in the same room, she is forced to resign and return to America.
The climax of the story comes with the epic Battle of Saint-Mihiel. David is shot down and presumed dead. However, he survives the crash landing, steals a German biplane, and heads for the Allied lines. By a tragic stroke of bad luck, he is spotted and shot down by Jack, who is bent on avenging his friend. When Jack lands to pick up a souvenir, he becomes distraught when he learns what he has done, but before David dies, he forgives his comrade.
With the end of the war, Jack returns home to a hero's welcome. When he returns David's effects to his grieving parents, David's mother blames the war, not Jack, for her son's death. Then, Jack is reunited with Mary and realizes he loves her.
The film, completed with a budget of $2 million, was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture (then called "Best Picture, Production") for the film year 1927/1928 (and was the only silent film to win), and won a second Academy Award for Engineering Effects. Primary scout aircraft flown in the film were Thomas-Morse MB3s and Curtis PW-8s.
The film was written by John Monk Saunders (story), Louis D. Lighton and Hope Loring and edited by Lucien Hubbard, and was produced by Lucien Hubbard, directed by William A. Wellman, with an original orchestral score by John Stepan Zamecnik, which was uncredited. The movie was shot at Kelly Field, San Antonio, Texas between September 7, 1926 and April 7, 1927.[6] A sneak preview was shown on May 19, 1927 at the Texas Theater on Houston Street in San Antonio. The Premier was held at the Criterion Theater, in New York City, on August 12, 1927.[7]
The film is one of the first to feature a male-on-male kiss – a fraternal one – in the death scene near the end. It is also one of the first widely released films to show nudity.[8] Clara Bow's breasts can be seen for a second during the Paris bedroom scene when army men barge in as she is changing her clothes. In the Enlistment Office, nude men undergoing physical exams, can be seen from behind, through an open door, which is opened and closed. This film was released a few months before the MPPDA list of "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" was established.[9]
Producer Lucien Hubbard hired director Wellman because of his World War I aviator experience. Arlen, Wellman, and John Monk Saunders had all served in World War I as military aviators. Arlen was able to do his own flying in the film and Rogers, a non-pilot, underwent flight training during the course of the production, so that, like Arlen, Rogers could also be filmed in closeup in the air. Lucien Hubbard offered flying lessons to all, and despite the number of aircraft in the air, only two incidents occurred, one involving Dick Grace, a stunt pilot and the other was a fatal crash of a United States Army Air Corps pilot.[10]
The original Paramount release was color tinted and had some sequences in an early widescreen process known as Magnascope, also used in the Paramount film Old Ironsides (1926). Some prints had synchronized sound effects and music, using the General Electric Kinegraphone (later RCA Photophone) sound-on-film process.[3]
Wings was an immediate success, premiering on August 12, 1927 at the Criterion Theatre in New York and playing 63 weeks before being moved to second-run theaters. One of the reasons for its resounding popularity was the public infatuation with aviation in the wake of Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight.[11] The critical response was equally enthusiastic as the critic of the New York Times noted that the realism of the flying scenes was impressive.[12]
On May 16, 1929, the first Academy Award ceremony was held at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood to honor outstanding film achievements of 1927 and 1928. Wings was entered in a number of categories but in contrast with later awards, there was no Best Picture award. Instead, there were two separate awards for production, the Most Artistic Quality of Production, won by Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and the Most Outstanding Production, won by Wings as well as Best Effects, Engineering Effects for Roy Pomeroy.[13]
The following year, the Academy instituted a single award called Best Production, and decided retroactively that the award won by Wings had been the equivalent of that award, with the result that Wings is often listed as the winner of a sole Best Picture award for the first year. The title of the award was eventually changed to Best Picture for the 1931 awards.
For many years, Wings was considered a lost film until a print was found in the Cinémathèque Française film archive in Paris and quickly copied from nitrate film to safety film stock.[3] It was again shown in theaters, including some theaters where the film was accompanied by Wurlitzer pipe organs.[14]
In 1997, Wings was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
In 2006, director William A. Wellman's son, William Wellman Jr., authored a book about the film and his father's participation in the making of it, titled The Man and His Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best Picture.
As the original negatives are lost, the closest to an original print is a spare negative stored in Paramount's vaults. Suffering with decay and defects, the negative was fully restored with modern technology. For the restored version of Wings, the original music score was re-orchestrated. The sound effects were recreated at Skywalker Sound using archived audio.[15]
The restored and remastered version of Wings, presented in high-definition, is scheduled to be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on January 24, 2012, coinciding with the centennial anniversary of Paramount.[15]
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