Only Angels Have Wings

Howard Hawks was one of the great American directors and 1939's Only Angels Have Wings is one of his masterpieces. Cary Grant stars as Geoff Carter, charismatic leader of a fledgling air mail service in South America, and Jean Arthur is Bonnie, a spunky showgirl who is swept into Carter's community of American expatriates as soon as she steps off the ship. Hawks's adventures often featured a bromance angle, so Bonnie's affable rival for Geoff's affections is the latter's best friend, Kid (Thomas Mitchell), an aging flier with bad eyes who Geoff has to ground. Adding to the tensions is a new pilot (Richard Barthelmess) who is snubbed by everyone for a past cowardice that got a colleague killed, and his glamorous wife (Rita Hayworth in her first major role), who has history with Geoff. Movies are built on such small world coincidences, but the magic of Hawks is his ability to mask contrivance and turn plot twists into tests of character. The screenplay is pure poetry and adventure-story-mythologizing, full of banter and metaphors, and it's shot almost entirely in Hollywood, where a fantasy of an American outpost in the South American jungle is created on the backlot. It's the quintessential Hawks movie of male bonding and tough love, where life is lived minute to minute, and the highest compliment one can receive is being called “professional.” Newly restored for DVD and Blu-ray, this handsome Criterion release has extras including audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between Hawks and filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a new interview with film critic David Thomson, a featurette on Hawks, a 1939 Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film, and an essay by critic Michael Sragow. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)