Tuesday, 3 July 2018

AFS Screening: Only Angels Have Wings

In the port town of Barranca in South America, Geoff (Cary Grant) and the pilots of Barranca Airways are responsible for getting mail from the port into the interior. To do so, they need to get their planes through a treacherous mountain pass blighted by unpredictable weather and poor visibility.


It's a hard life, made a little harder by the airline's declining financial state: they have reached the point where one more downed plane will force it to close down forever.


On top of these professional pressures, Geoff has to contend with the arrival of two new variables: Bonnie (Jean Arthur), a young American woman who becomes infatuated with Geoff; and Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess), a new hire who is infamous for leaving his engineer to die on a during a plane crash earlier in his career. What makes it worse is that MacPherson has brought his wife, Judy (Rita Hayworth), Geoff's old flame...

The Howard Hawks movies I have seen, at least the ones that stick in the mind, all share one thing: a 'family' unit of men defined by a mutual code of honour and professionalism. In this respect, Only Angels Have Wings, which I saw for the first time this week, fits that description to a T.

A quintessential Howard Hawks joint, Only Angels Have Wings is based around a a group of professional airmail pilots determined to complete their runs no matter what obstacles - real or female - get in their way.
One element that always fascinates me about the visual vocabulary of studio filmmakers like Hawks is the focus on letting scenes play out in a single wide shot. The camera only moves when it has to; close-ups and cuts are used to emphasise a dramatic reveal or shift in power within a scene. It is good, solid craftsmanship, and Hawks is a great example of the style. His use of simple coverage and extended takes allow scenes to build and play out at their own pace.


Hawks was famous for rehearsing  extensively with his casts, and adding their ideas and improvisations into scenes. This is a major part of why his movies have such a sense of community and family. Scenes like Jeff and the Kid's (Thomas Mitchell) playful tussle over a coin, or Bonnie (Jean Arthur) showing Jeff up at the piano, feel spontaneous and immersive into the characters' world.
While the focus on a self-contained community of professionals with a shared code was great, I was surprised by how underwhelming the female characters were - Hawks has created several strong female characters, but I found Jean Arthur's character a little listless. She starts out outraged at Jeff's lack of emotion when a fellow flyer dies, and then in the space of a few minutes becomes infatuated with him.


It's helped by the fact that Arthur and Grant have good chemistry, but I still found her turn a little too convenient. It's clear what the intention is - Hawks is creating a world where life and death are constantly in the balance, and the nature of the flyers' work requires a level of emotional disconnect in order for them to function. Jeff is the most detached of the flyers, and his sparring with the open-hearted Bonnie becomes the main site of conflict.


Despite the movie's darkness, the movie is incredibly funny and warm. And while the movie is sold on the imagery of aerial adventures, the movie's strongest element is the interactions between the ensemble while they are grounded, waiting for the weather to clear. I love movies based around characters forced together in confined spaces, and Only Angels Have Wings is at its most exciting when it is just about the relationships - will Bonnie melt Jeff's reserve? Will the Kid avenge himself for his brother's death? Will MacPherson prove his worth? The flying sequences stand up pretty well, considering the technical limitations of the time, but they are not the reason to watch the movie -  it is probably in part thanks to those technical limitations that the movie is so dramatically sound.


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