Saturday Night Cinema: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Tonight's Saturday Night Cinema is a fantastic Howard Hawks film starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth, Only the Angels have Wings. 

"A bizarre and gorgeous film to say the least, this masterwork (based on a story fragment written by Hawks in 1938 titled Plane from Barranca) embodies a fantastic range of opposite states of mind and being.
One of the sublime action movies of the era, with Grant in a John Wayne-like role, matched by Jean Arthur."

"Great little drama packed full of twists and great characters."

Howard Hawks's 'Only Angels Have Wings' NY Times, Frank Hugent, May 12, 1939

Howard Hawks, whose aviation melodramas must, we suspect, drive
airline stock down from two to three points per showing, has produced
another fatality-littered thriller in "Only Angels Have Wings" (even the
title is ominous) which opened yesterday at the Music Hall. This once,
however, Mr. Hawks has charitably transferred his operations base to
Ecuador, presumably having exhausted his local sources, not to mention
the patience of the commercial transport people.

In Ecuador, in the banana port of Barranca, he has indulged himself
and the vicarious adventurers in the audience in a delightful series of
crack-ups, close-shaves and studiously dramatic speeches. It is all very
exciting and Juvenile.

Barranca, says Mr. Hawks, is a sultry little spot boasting a general
store and bar, a swampy landing field and Cary Grant as operations
manager for a junky air line which must maintain a regular schedule for
six months to obtain the mail subsidy. Flying conditions are rarely
better than impossible. There are the Andes, there is a narrow pass with
clawing crags and a group of pilots who seem to be broad targets for
all the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, chiefly of feminine
origin.

We particularly marveled at one sequence in which a flyer, grounded
by failing eyesight, breaks another's arm in a fight and soon is helping
probe a bullet from the commander's shoulder. That is known as piling
it on.

Not content with this fell set-up, Mr. Hawks, as author, has chosen
to add a few dramatic and romantic complications. Miss Arthur enters the
scene as a stranded showgirl, and a less convincing showgirl than Miss
Arthur would be hard to find. Enter, too, Richard Barthelmess as a pilot
with a black blot on his record and a wife who, by some strange
coincidence, used to be Mr. Grant's fiancée.

The brew stirs slowly, as is the way with two-hour shows, tending
toward silly romanticism in its dialogue, but moving splendidly whenever
the plot's wheels leave the ground and take off over the Andes.

Few things, after all, are as exciting as a plane in flames, or the
metallic voices of a pilot in a fog-shrouded plane and the chap in the
radio room, or a screaming power dive, or the wild downward swoop of a
plane taking off from a canyon's rim.

Mr. Hawks has staged his flying sequences brilliantly. He has caught
the drama in the meeting of a flier and the brother of the man he
killed.

ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, screen play by Jules
Furthman based on a story by Howard Hawks; directed and produced by Mr.
Hawks for Columbia Pictures. At the Radio City Music Hall.

Geoff Carter . . . . . Cary Grant

Bonnie Lee . . . . . Jean Arthur

Bat MacPherson . . . . . Richard Barthelmess

Judy . . . . . Rita Hayworth

Kid Dabb . . . . . Thomas Mitchell

Les Peters . . . . . Allyn Joslyn

Dutchy . . . . . Sig Rumann

Sparks . . . . . Victor Kilian

Gent Shelton . . . . . John Carroll

Tex . . . . . Donald Barry

Joe Souther . . . . . Noah Berry Jr.

Lily . . . . . Melissa Sierra

Doctor . . . . . Lucio Villegas

Mike . . . . . Pat Flaherty

Pancho . . . . . Pedro Regas

Baldy . . . . . Pat West

ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS, screen play by Jules
Furthman based on a story by Howard Hawks; directed and produced by Mr.
Hawks for Columbia Pictures. At the Radio City Music Hall.

Geoff Carter . . . . . Cary Grant

Bonnie Lee . . . . . Jean Arthur

Bat MacPherson . . . . . Richard Barthelmess

Judy . . . . . Rita Hayworth

Kid Dabb . . . . . Thomas Mitchell

Les Peters . . . . . Allyn Joslyn

Dutchy . . . . . Sig Rumann

Sparks . . . . . Victor Kilian

Gent Shelton . . . . . John Carroll

Tex . . . . . Donald Barry

Joe Souther . . . . . Noah Berry Jr.

Lily . . . . . Melissa Sierra

Doctor . . . . . Lucio Villegas

Mike . . . . . Pat Flaherty

Pancho . . . . . Pedro Regas

Baldy . . . . . Pat West

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TheFlying_Camel

11 years ago

Rats took it down!

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Edward Cline

11 years ago

How about substituting Zoltan Korda’s 1939 “The Four Feathers.” Depicts the British wupping Islamic butt.

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