Only Angels Have Wings

Movies are right at home, the old bread and butter, when dealing with characters running away from something, looking for another shot after some horrific mistake was made in the past.  If movies have taught us anything, for an American in this situation, there's two options...both equally deadly.  One, enlist in the French Foreign Legion where you will most likely get killed in a nasty massacre in the desert.  Two, go to South America and waste away in some dingy, damp village.  That's not the whole premise of 1939's Only Angels Have Wings, but it's close.

Reading the description of this 1939 flick from Columbia Pictures, my first reaction was how similar it sounded to the French classic The Wages of Fear and its American remake Sorcerer.  'Angels' obviously came first, but it deals with a similar topic.  Deep in an unnamed South American country, a group of Americans -- displaced by their choice or someone else forcing their hand -- working for a struggling company.  For one reason or another, they're all running from something in their past, now forced into doing a job that will just as likely kill them as make them rich.

Waiting for her ship to depart, American singer Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) stumbles upon a little haven of back home in a South American port city. A complex owned by a European immigrant, Dutch (Sig Ruman) and run by an American pilot, Geoff Carter (Cary Grant), has a restaurant that serves good, old-fashioned American food with a runway outside the building. Bonnie is quickly drawn to the smooth, suave, most definitely aloof Geoff, only to find out how perilous the situation is.  Dutch and Geoff have signed a contract to deliver the mail twice a week by plane to cities inland for six months and then receive a big payday.  If they fail to deliver, the contract is void.  With their stable of American pilots and World War I era planes, they've managed to make it five months and two weeks.  They're close to their goal, but the flights become ever more dangerous, and the only way through to the next city is a flight through the fog-covered, looming mountains inland.

I watched this movie over a couple of sittings -- stupid work, getting in the way of my movie watching -- and certainly enjoyed it enough, although I didn't love it. My complaint here is one I usually have with movies released in the 1930s.  Hollywood was still figuring out what worked and didn't work with movies, what audiences wanted and what they didn't want.  For the most part, the acting isn't over the top as the cast thankfully turns down the theatrical stage touches.  It is filmed completely on an indoor set which limits the scope of the story, but in an effort to balance that out, there is some great footage of these rickety looking planes flying through the mountains, taking off and landing, canceling out some of the cheaper effects to illustrate the planes "flying" through rough weather conditions.  So what was wrong with this flick? I'm not sure, but something was missing.

Director Howard Hawks carved quite a nice little niche for himself in a career that includes over 40 movies, many of them held in high regard among fans and critics. His stories often focused on a group of men brought together through unlikely, strenuous circumstances having to band together to accomplish a similar goal, bonding in the process and putting their differences aside.  'Angels' is right at home with that premise.  Grant is the tough but fair owner and chief pilot of this motley "airline," if you can call it that.  His pilots include the always reliable and entertaining Thomas Mitchell as Kid Dabb, a veteran pilot struggling with vision loss, Allyn Joslyn, Noah Beery Jr., Victor Kilian, John Carroll, and Don Barry filling out the ranks of this misfit outfit.

Through all the slower portions of the movie with the pretty awful love triangle, Geoff's crew and their story carries the movie.  Grant is at his suave, roguish best, Mitchell is as reliable as ever as the smart-mouthed sidekick, and Rugan and Co. fill in the holes wherever necessary.  A key subplot has a new pilot, Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess) arriving to fly, only to find out he's got a past with Mitchell's Kid. The men hold his past decisions against him, but MacPherson rises to the occasion as he desperately attempts to prove it was all a mistake.  That's what works so well here.  All these men are running from something so whether they realize it or not, they're all in the same boat.  If this business have any hopes of succeeding, they will have to work together and put their differences aside.  For Hawks, it's a tried and true formula, and as usual, it works.

Now Hawks used that formula a few more times during his career, but he also threw in those awkward, unnecessary love triangles too.  Arthur's Bonnie falls for Cary Grant almost right away so then we get two hours of her trying to figure out if she belongs with him.  Then MacPherson's new bride (21-year old Rita Hayworth) ends up being a woman from Grant's past to complicate things.  Oh, no! Two women in love with the same man?!?  If you have an iota of intelligence, you know who he is going to end up with, but my goodness, it takes awhile getting there.  Thankfully, there's enough positive going on to outweigh the dull, slow-moving negatives. You can watch it at Youtube, starting HERE with Part 1 of 12.

Only Angels Have Wings <---trailer (1939): ***/****