Only Angels Have Wings
(1939)
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Virtually a textbook example of Howard Hawks' macho mode, Only Angels Have Wings takes place high in the Peruvian Andes. Cary Grant heads a ramshackle airmail and freight service, forced to fly in the most perilous of weather conditions to the most treacherous of destinations. Facing death on a near-hourly basis, Grant and his flyers have adopted a casual, all-in-day's-work attitude towards mortality. If a pilot cracks up and dies, it's simply because he didn't have what it took, and that's that. Stranded showgirl Jean Arthur can't stand this cavalier attitude at first, but before long she becomes, in true Hawksian fashion, one of the guys. Complicating the story is the presence of Richard Barthelmess, who has been persona non grata with the other pilots ever since his carelessness cost the life of one of their number. In addition to a surfeit of guilt, Barthelmess is saddled with a faithless wife, played by Rita Hayworth in her first important A-picture role. Hayworth makes a play for Grant, but he spurns her, finally realizing that, in spite of himself, he's in love with Arthur. Grant himself is riddled with guilt when near-blind pilot Thomas Mitchell insists upon taking on one final flight. Having lost his best friend, Grant drops his hard-bitten shell, and for the first time opens himself up emotionally to Arthur-which of course leads to a nail-biting climax wherein Arthur suffers mightily as Grant faces certain death. Scripted by Jules Furthman from a story by Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings is a treasure trove of terse, pithy dialogue: our favorite scene occurs when, upon discovering that he's about to die, Thomas Mitchell says he's often wondered how he'd react to imminent death-and, now that death is but a few moments away, he'd rather that no one else be around to witness his reaction. Though sometimes laid low by obvious miniatures, the aerial scenes in Only Angels Have Wings are by and large first-rate, earning a first-ever best special effects Oscar nomination for Roy Davidson and Edwin C. Hahn.~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide |
One of the greatest films from the most memorable year in cinema history, overlooked at the time as a simple action adventure but now recognised as a superb study of grace under pressure. This Howard Hawks movie about a civil airline taking mail and freight over the treacherous Andes contains all of producer/director Hawks's key themes and some of his finest sequences, and boasts a splendid cast headed by hard-bitten Cary Grant and chirpy Jean Arthur. They are superbly backed by Rita Hayworth as a vamp and Richard Barthelmess as a disgraced flier. The action is contained mainly in two cheap sets — a rundown bar and the adjacent air-control office — and the tension generated is all the more palpable for being so constrained. This was nominated for the first ever special-effects Oscar — the shot of the condor breaking through Thomas Mitchell's cockpit window is genuinely surprising. However, it's the characters you'll remember. This is great cinema: supremely entertaining, mature storytelling.
Halliwell's Film Guide
For an action film this is really too restricted by talk and cramped studio sets, and its theme was more entertainingly explored in Red Dust. Still, it couldn't be more typical of the Howard Hawks film world, where men are men and women have to be