Wings
August. 12,1927 PG-13Two young men, one rich, one middle class, both in love with the same woman, become US Air Corps fighter pilots and, eventually, heroic flying aces during World War I. Devoted best friends, their mutual love of the girl eventually threatens their bond. Meanwhile, a hometown girl who's the lovestruck lifelong next door neighbor of one of them pines away.
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Reviews
I love this movie so much
You won't be disappointed!
That was an excellent one.
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Set in a WWI setting the first thing I noticed about this film was the amazingly shot flight scenes, they capture what it must have felt like to fly these planes so perfectly it completely immerses you into the time period. The acting on the other hand was a slightly over shadowed by these visuals. The acting was a bit over the top but like I've seen with other silent movies, like Charlie Chaplin's The Circus, this is necessary in order to better portray the emotions of the characters and the overall mood of the scene. However the way the comedy mixes with the dark tone of a war setting is also very well done. With today's standards in movies I'm constantly surprised with how these silent films can make me laugh and feel amazed all in one.
This was definitely a great film. Not something I would necessarily pick out for myself, but definitely good. One thing that I did not like about this movie was how long the plane scenes were. I will say that they were really well done and they impressed me; I felt like they were a bit long. Besides that, everything was very well done. All of the actors did a very good job portraying the characters. They were all believable and anyone could relate to them. The love story that was one of the main ideas for this movie was very well played as well. The fact that both the rich guy and poor guy were both in love with the beautiful girl, but the poor guy ends up realizing that the girl he knew was actually the girl he loved. This shows excellent character development. This movie was also very long, especially for its time considering most movies were around an hour and a half long. Overall, this movie was put together very nicely and I would definitely recommend it to someone who loves war movies.
This was the first movie to earn an Oscar for best movie. i think that it really is worthy of the award. It has a lot of interesting points, the movie is action filled and the story is very exciting. the Acting is far from the quality of actors that we have now in the 21st century, but its amazing what this people was able to do without sound. The characters are well defined and you really connect with them. one thing that impressed me is that this movie doesn't have "bad guys", just normal people in a really bad situation, like the war. The special effects are just another bright part of the movie. Its amazing how almost a hundred years ago they were able to make special effects as good as you can see in this movie: the explosions, the airplanes flying, the compositions, this was an aspect that surprised me. I didn't think that something so elaborate could be done until decades later, but they were able to accomplish great special effects in that time. if you are going to watch a silent movie, let it be this one.
William A. Wellman's "Wings" is now remembered as the very first movie to win an Academy Award, and the only silent winner until "The Artist". Focusing on some men sent to fight in World War I, it takes an undeniably patriotic view of the war: the heroic Americans gallantly go after the cruel Germans. And of course the movie doesn't miss a chance to show off Clara Bow; I bet that the sight of her helped a lot of boys become men back in the 1920s.However, there are some other things that the movie shows that I would say deserve more attention. During the past year or two, the hundredth anniversary of the first global war has drawn questions about the war. An important scene early in the movie shows a German-American man enlisting in the army, only to face discrimination for his German background. This happened a lot in the US during World War I, encouraged by Woodrow Wilson's fanatical nativism. Elia Kazan's "East of Eden" also features a scene set during World War I in which a German-American gets attacked as "the enemy". The most pronounced instance of this was the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.Later in the movie, some characters are discussing things that have happened in the war. One of them says "That's war." Indeed, what befell the individuals is characteristic of war. The horror that occurred on the battlefield only scratches the surface of the damage that WWI did. Not only did it senselessly kill millions of people and create a lost generation, but the Versailles Negotiations imposed reparations on Germany that set the stage for Hitler's rise to power. On top of that, Wilson (a dyed-in-the-wool racist) refused to listen to a young Ho Chi Minh, setting the stage for the Vietnam War. The division of the Middle East cut off Armenia from Mt. Ararat (after the Armenians had already suffered a genocide at the hands of the Ottomans), while the Kurds, Yazidis and Palestinians didn't even get their own countries.As for the movie, I thought that it did a good job with the battlefield scenes. The heroification weakens the movie, but the cinematography is some of the most impressive that I've ever seen. I guess that I recommend it as a look at old-style cinema.