Review of Only Angels Have Wings (1939) by James W — 20 Jan 2010

While in college, I worked as a movie projectionist, and had an opportunity to show many great films for the various film courses being taught. But one film left a distinct impressionâ??over the course of five days I had to show it eight times. I got to know it pretty well. Its name is â??-Only Angels Have Wingsâ?? and it was directed by one of the great director-producers, Howard Hawks.

Hawks directed all types of movies, many of them classics of their genre: westerns (Rio Bravo, Red River); mystery/noir (The Big Sleep); adventure (To Have and Have Not, Hatari!) and comedy (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday). He even produced one of the first truly classic science fiction films (The Thing! [From Another World]), and an iconic musical (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Despite the genre, and despite the decade in which it was produced each film is unmistakably a Hawks film â?? a group of men (and women, but usually men) of diverse talents must come together to achieve a singular goal, be it to drive a huge herd of cattle to Missouri, or contain the alien threat, or capture a live rhinoceros, or get the bad guy to the Marshall (alive if possible) or ferry the refugees to safety, or find the dinosaur clavicle, or land a millionaire.

Conflict is achieved by introducing a newcomer to the mix who doesnâ??t understand the synergy of the group and who must learn â??the codeâ?? to belong, and that keeps the group in cohesion. And so much the better if they do it without talking about it much.

Thatâ??s the Hawks formula, and he was able to create enough variations in the design that his films all seem different, even though theyâ??re always telling the same basic storyâ??a story thatâ??s a metaphor for movie-making.*.

Why â??-Only Angels Have Wingsâ?? out of all those classics? It is the ultimate Hawks movie. Watch any of those others and youâ??ll hear similar lines and see similar situations, but in â??Angels,â?? everything is distilled to the basic essence of the tale to become the best Hemingway story Hemingway never wrote. Distilled? The majority of the film takes place in one set! For this band of professionals, the goal is to fly the mail from the port city of Barancca through a narrow passage in the Andes utilizing one of a number of prop aircraft, all in need of repair. The men realize theyâ??re merely links in a chain getting the mailâ?¦or a doctorâ?¦or a shipment of nitro-glycerinâ?¦to its destination with the threat of death flying right alongside. So hazardous is the job for these civilian-pilots that their base is a revolving door for the new blood who have to prove themselves. Itâ??s "The Right Stuffâ?? twenty years before Tom Wolfe popularized the phrase.

And itâ??s prime Hawks. For instance, watch the cigarettes. In a Hawks film, theyâ??re visual short-hand for relationshipsâ??whoâ??s in need and who can provide, whoâ??s giving, whoâ??s dependable, giving, taking, reading other's thoughts, . More than any other Hawks film, except perhaps â??Rio Bravo,â?? the flame thatâ??s there when you need it is a gambit that crams twice the information into the film, and reveals more about the characters than their deliberately circumspect dialogâ??what Frank Capra called Hawksâ??s â??three-corner dialogâ??â??was allowed. To come right out and say things point-blank, well, not only would it be corny and unbelieveableâ?¦it just wasnâ??t done in Hawks's circles.

Hawks also liked to use music to convey mood. But it usually isnâ??t a Hollywood background score it's indigenous musicâ??in this case, the bar band at Dutchyâ??s bar/mercantile and air terminal (this is a couple of years before â??Casablancaâ??). They set the mood, provide a little extra entertainment value, some local color for a set-bound movie and when the time is right and thereâ??s a meeting of minds itâ??s reflected in a musical number in which everyone participates. Again, no one has to come out and say â??Weâ??re all thinking the same way.â?? Theyâ??re all singing the same song, so itâ??s understood.

Thereâ??s also the unspoken ethos of the professionalâ??you do your job to the best of your ability and you donâ??t talk about it. You donâ??t brag. You donâ??t cut corners and you donâ??t dwell on it. You do your job, you move on. You do your job right and people will notice. Do your job wrong and everyone suffers. In this way the group can depend on each other while staying out of their debt. In this movie-atmosphere, bit-players are allowed to shine. Yeah, the movie revolves around Cary Grant (and the only role where he would be more stoic than he is here would be playing the icy spy Devlin in Hitchcockâ??s â??Notoriousâ??) and the delightful Jean Arthurâ??she could turn on a dime from tragedy to comedy and not miss a stepâ?? but even the lowliest of character-actors get great moments of screen-time. Also of note are a very young Rita Hayworth at the start of her career and Richard Barthlemessâ??a former silent screen star who didnâ??t make the transition to â??talkies.â?? He plays a pilot who must prove himself to the others and that he can â??cutâ?? it in their world. Art imitates life.

And then thereâ??s Thomas Mitchell, who might well be the greatest character actor to never achieve name-above-the-title status. A veteran of many a Frank Capra comedyâ??and whose most prominent role would be as Scarlett Oâ??Haraâ??s father in â??Gone with the Windâ??â??here he plays a character with the title â??The Kid,â?? even though heâ??s the oldest of the pilots. So much of the movie centers on him that his one character fulfills every plot device except love interest, although with Hawks one could never be too sure of that, either. **.

Ultimately itâ??s Mitchellâ??s Kid who provides the means for Grantâ??s character to express his feelings, which, typically, he does without really having to, and in a way that makes it obvious to everybody involved. And as if anybody missed the point how dependent everyone is on each other, most of the pilots wind up injured, â??wingedâ?? so that by the end of the movie, two pilots have to perform the job of one to fly each mail-run. Perhaps the better title may have been â??-Only Angels Have Two Wings.â??

Itâ??s all done so economically, so breezily and with so little in the way of â??actionâ?? that one may get through the entire movie before realizing that mostly everybody just talkedâ?¦without really coming out and saying what they mean. Everything is shot at eye-level. Thereâ??s nothing fancy in the camera-work. The story is the King, and everyone is working towards making it workâ?¦like professionals.