Only Angels Have Wings
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Movie Reviews of Only Angels Have Wings
Movie Review: It's a Man's World
Summary: 5 Stars
When we shuffle off to that fabled desert island I'll let you take CASABLANCA or CITIZEN KANE or any other Greatest American Film you care to name - I'll take ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS and count myself the lucky one.We're in the tiny port of call Barranca on the coast of Ecuador. Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur), a `specialty' entertainer, is getting off the boat. A couple of fly-boys pick her up and treat her to a dinner at the hotel/restaurant/bar and headquarters of Barranca Airlines. Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) enters and sends one of the fly-boys off into a nasty spell of weather - the mail has to be delivered.
The plane crashes and the pilot is killed. The rest of the pilots, led by Carter, respond with indifference and some forced gaiety. Bonnie is shocked by the callousness of it all:
Bonnie: Haven't you any feelings? Don't you realize he's dead?
Geoff: Who's dead? Who's Joe?
One face slap later Geoff lays it out for her. "And all the weeping and wailing in the world won't make him any deader 20 years from now. If you feel like bawling, how do you think we feel?"
End of lesson one. Bonnie is intrigued enough to miss her connecting boat and stays in Barranca for an action packed week. Geoff may be her ideal man, if she can just crack The Code.
ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS is less plot driven than most. Rather, it is a slow accumulation of scenes dealing with themes director Howard Hawks would return to again and again - male camaraderie, stoic indifference to danger, courage and devotion to duty. It also asks how women fit into this testosterone loaded environment. As usual, he assembles a competent ensemble cast and explores these issues from a number of angles.
For instance, take Bat MacPherson (Richard Bathelmess), a good pilot who has a black mark against him. Prior to arriving in Barranca he bailed out of a plane and allowed his co-pilot to die in the crash. That type of cowardice offends The Code, and MacPherson is ostracized and given the worst and most dangerous assignments - if he dies the group's indifference won't be feigned. By coincidence MacPherson arrives with his beautiful wife Judy (Rita Hayworth), the `somebody' Bonnie earlier tells Geoff "must've given you an awful beating once." Judy couldn't conform to The Code with Geoff, and as luck will have it she's saddled with another confounding male - she doesn't understand why the other pilots shun her husband, and The Code doesn't allow anyone to explain it to her.
Everyone is on top of their game in this one (this was Rita Hayworth's breakout movie). As an unexpected and bonus the print is almost immaculate. The dvd also contains a number of movie posters, biographies of the director and the major stars and a trailers for HIS GIRL FRIDAY and GILDA.
Movie Review: When Men Were Men, and Women Weren't
Summary: 5 Stars
Howard Hawks fashioned Jules Furthman's good screenplay into a true screen classic of male comaraderie and the women who must choose to accept it and love without attempting to change it. Hawks had Martinique as the setting for "To Have and Have Not" but showed his preference for exotic locales early on by setting "Only Angels Have Wings" in the South American port of Barranca. It makes a colorful backdrop to an even more colorful story of what it is to be a man.
The banana boats are coming in and Geoff (Cary Grant) is sending the mail out by plane in dangerous conditions in order to keep afloat his rag-tag outfit of pilots, living dangerously and liking it. They all wear guns but it's the weather that's more likely to take them down.
This is made clear early on when Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) hits the port for a short layover and attracts the good-natured attention of a couple of Geoff's pilots, one of whom Bonnie will see go down in flames just a few hours later. It is only then that Bonnie, already attracted to Geoff, will get a glimpse of real men and what their world is like.
Hawks shows the suspicion men who've been with a woman or two often harbor towards every female in a telling scene when Bonnie takes a momento from the fallen pilot's belongings and Geoff scoffs at her greed. Only moments later when she gives it to the young Mexican girl who adored him does he give Bonnie a few points, and then only in surprise.
Arthur is terrific here trying not to let her emotions show so she can live in Geoff's world. When a new pilot with a checkered past shows up (Richard Barthelmess), with Geoff's old flame in tow (Rita Hayworth), Bonnie realizes just how serious Geoff is about never asking anything of a woman. There is a ton of male adventure filling the screen in the meantime.
There are dangerous flights with nitro, daring flights for doctors, and Hawks even allowing a female into the act when Bonnie wings Geoff by accident with his own pistol. She goes to pieces, of course, as in Hawks' world, men were men and women weren't. I've never met a guy who doesn't love this film and perhaps that's why. Hawks adds his own spin on the romantic touch with the flip of a coin saying everything Geoff cannot put into words.
Grant is great here and Arthur sparkles. The rest of the cast is excellent, with Thomas Mitchell especially memorable as Geoff's best friend. Any male who wants to hang out in a bar with their pals and not talk about what every man already knows by virtue of their kind, will love this one. You'll wish there were a few girls like Arthur still out there too. Just a fantastic look at good men, jaded about women, but still needing them. Another masterpiece from director Howard Hawks.
Movie Review: Definitive Break Into The 1940s
Summary: 5 Stars
Many of the other movies of 1939, the so called Golden Year of American Films, are the culmination of a decade of experiments with sound (and the consequent adjustment in acting style which the "talkies" necessitated). Thus Mr. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, for example, forms the perfection of a certain kind of screwball/sentimental comedy that Frank Capra had been making all throughout the 1930s. When it comes to ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, however, something entirely new is being born, and the picture ruptures the through-line of previous films by all of its participants, especially the director, Howard Hawks, who really finds his feet here for the first time.
For Cary Grant, it was a step he really wasn't prepared to take, and his subsequent releases backed off from the hard, cold, unlikable he-man he plays here. His Geoff Carter doesn't really give a damn about anything except flying and Thomas Mitchell, "Kid Dabb." Geoff's romantic feelings for Bonnie (Jean Arthur) and Judy (Rita Hayworth) are nearly entirely cynical. In Hawks' world, a woman earns the right to be with a man by acting like one. Men don't want trouble (so for the most part they don't want women.)
There's something Shakespearean about the piece and it's not just the incredible presence of Richard Barthelmess, a great actor but no longer the exquisite boy-man of TOL'BLE DAVID and the Griffith silent films. Here, like Falstaff, he has seen the chimes at midnight. It's also the knowledge that one style of screen acting (Jean Arthur's) is on its way out and a new one (Hayworth's) is on its way in--not acting at all really, but spectacle. Splendid in its own way.
Movie Review: This movie has it all....
Summary: 5 Stars
Only Angels Have Wings is a perfect example of an often ignored, but excellent, classic movie. Directed by Howard Hawks, and with a great cast, Only Angels Have Wings is half exciting adventure movie and half romantic comedy. The sense of setting and atmosphere is very good as well - you almost feel as though the movie transports you to the imaginary South American port town of Barranca. The movie describes the adventures of a group of pilots working in a very dangerous location - they are hemmed in by mountains, and constantly face bad weather conditions. More specifically, it focuses on Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur), a chorus girl staying in the town, and her encounters with the tough boss of the business, Jeff Carter (Cary Grant). The cast is very good. Cary Grant, though not playing his usual role, is excellent as the tough boss, who only flys when it is too tough for anyone else. Jean Arthur is sweet and believable as the stranded chorus girl, and the supporting cast, including a very young Rita Hayworth (in her first A-movie) is perfect.
Anyhow, if you haven't seen this hidden classic from 1939, what are you waiting for? The DVD is very good - the movie is very clear and sharp, and there are a few interesting special features as well (previews for other movies and old advertisement posters, for instance). But the movie alone is worth getting - it is a must have!
Movie Review: A Forgotten Classic, Glad Someone Recommended It!
Summary: 5 Stars
First off, if you like Howard Hawks in general, or To Have and Have Not, you will love this movie. To Have and Have Not lifts its entire plot line and much of its dialogue from this, perhaps even finer, movie.
Cary Grant is hard-bitten, amoral, and cold as ice in this movie. And he's great! Way better than when he's acting suave or zany in other movies. The flying scenes have aged far better than similar special effects in other movies, and the dialogue, sexual tension, and machismo still crackles. I could imagine Barranca existing sixty years ago, and I imagine that it still exists in modern form today.
The plot line is fairly bare, a bunch of down on their luck pilots disagree, fight, and try to get by in a jungle port. (Barranca, where the film takes place, is one of the greatest sets I've ever seen. Maybe the best black and white set with the exception of Rick's Cafe Americain ever). There's a vengeance plot line, an unrequited love, and a floundering airline mixed in. It sounds like too much, but the combination works just right. The gray, noirish atmosphere really adds to the feeling of depression-era despair and hope.
Really, really good.