Silent Saturday: Wings

1927 romantic war drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: War and romance! And Clara Bow's boobs.

Clara Bow partial nudity and the screen's first man-on-man lip action! What's not to love about this first Best Picture award winner?

Clara Bow's hair is a lovely mess in early scenes. Here's a confession: The only real reason I watch so many silent movies is because I like the look of the women in them. I fall in love with an actress in almost every silent movie that I watch.

There's nothing special about the story--all love triangles and dogfights and 1920's melodrama--and the overly dramatic intertitles and the fact that I had trouble telling the two male leads (nondescript white dudes) apart bothered me, but I sure like the look of this film. There's some dopey, dated dogfight stuff, but there are also some really cool, creative shots. I loved the look of planes submerged by clouds and plane shadows, an almost dizzying shot of characters swinging, some neat split-screen war action, and a great tracking shot over the tables in a French bar. I'm not sure what I thought about a special effect that added superfluous bubbles, however.

Those bubbles did lead to my favorite intertitle in this: "Come wiz me--we will find ze mos' beautiful bubbles in ze worl'"

This was the first Academy Awards Best Picture winner, and it was also the only silent movie to ever win the award. Sunrise and Metropolis also came out in 1927 and were both better than this.