The Talk of the Town

The Talk of the Town (George Stevens, 1942) One could almost look at The Talk of the Town as being a sequel of sorts to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, focusing on the judicial branch, rather than the legislative, and with more of a divided heart as to what kind of movie it should be.  

Part of that may be the number of screenwriters involved. Not only is Mr. Smith's scripter Sidney Buchman present, but also Irwin Shaw (both men would feel the lash of the blacklist in the 1950's) and Dale Van Every for story adaptation.  That many cooks typing away may explain the sometimes lurching tone from comedy to romance to high-mindedness to, uh, the underlying plot-line that once-in-awhile gets attended to.

The "main" interest is: who will Nora Shelley (Jean Arthur) end up with, romantically?  Stevens shot two endings and let preview audiences decide. Case closed.

It's the least material aspect to the film in the first place.  The plot involves the burning of a local mill and the framing of mill worker and "activist" (one assumes a unionist) Leopold Dilg (Cary Grant) for arson and the murder of the plant foreman.  Everything is stacked against Dilg from the mill owner calling for his blood in the sympathetic press, to the trial judge being in Holmes' hip-pocket.  Dilg escapes from prison (in a dramatic opening sequence that's a bit out of sync with the rest of the movie) and hides out in "Sweetbrook," the rental house run by his high-school acquaintance Nora, who's trying to get the place in shape for the impending arrival of a temporary lodger, law dean Michael Lightcap (Ronald Colman) who's taking the Summer off to write a book.  This being a comedy, Lightcap arrives early—the night Dilg has stumbled his way in—and Nora has to hide the runaway in the attic, while the police comb the area looking for him.

"Hilarity ensues"

After a restless first night for all—nervous Nora has spent the night in another room and Dilg snores in his attic roost leading Lightcap to advise Nora she needs to do something about her adenoids—the complications begin: Dilg is too restless a spirit and cranky an agitator to to stay cooped in the attic; Lightcap needs a secretary and to keep Dilg under wraps and separated from Lightcap, Nora takes the job; and then, to raise the stakes, a local Senator stops by to tell Lightcap he's being nominated for the Supreme Court.  So, politics being what they are (the same as always), if there's any hint of scandal, oh, like, say, harboring a wanted fugitive in your house, it could hurt the professor's chances of being one of the Supremes (depending on who's in The White House, of course).

Dilg being Dilg, he can't stay under wraps for long, and he's soon hiding in plain sight as "the gardener," and his views of the law leads to some sparring over the letter of the law and how it can conflict with the intent, especially when those intentions are not honorable to the spirit of the law, and Lightcap finds himself embroiled in a conflict of interest, where his cloistered view from his ivory tower looks pretty good in theory, but bares only a conversational similarity to its practical applications in the world of dog-eat-dog. 

That's the meat of The Talk of the Town, but the screenwriters and Stevens must gild it with a "who gets the girl" storyline that will satisfy the jury of the audience.  Stevens let the answer to the question be decided by a preview audience of peers—with nothing decided until the very last second.  With Colman as a sophisticated book-smart professional with a lot of learning to do, and Grant as am earnest dreamer, it's hard to choose, but Arthur is, as always, a delight, finding ways to make the quick-witted Nora flustered, but with the best of intentions and the most charming of choices.   Like the movie, she's a bit of a mess, but an enjoyable one.

Topper (1937)

Topper (Norman Z. McLeod, 1937) Amazing that this one hasn't crossed my path before.  The original author, Thorne Smith, was responsible for the source of I Married a Witch, which was an odd twee dip into the supernatural, dark cauldron division.  Topper is considerably lighter—airier in spirit—much more screwball comedy-oriented, especially given its send-up of the priveleged class.  

George and Marion Kirby (Cary Grant, Constance Bennett) are idle-rich folk, who after a night and day of irresponsible living cannot escape an irresponsible death by taking a corner too fast in their roadster and crashing into a tree.  They don't survive, although they do walk away from the accident, but merely as ghosts, fading in and out of reality—a sort of supernatural version of an extended drunk.  "Well for once in our ... Well, for once, we're stuck," says George with clarity and a little regret.  The couple decide then and there to do a good deed—taking on, as guardian angels, their banker Cosmo Topper (played by scene-stealer Roland Young), hen-pecked by his restrictive wife (Billie Burke).  He lives a carefully-managed, tightly-scheduled life of quiet desperation, yearning to breathe free, or at least have a little fun now and again.  The Kirbys provide him with the ghost of a chance and, although initially stumbling with the opportunity, he learns to embrace it, dealing with the disappearances, the levitation's and the other miracles that his ambassadors to a better life provide him.

It's from 1937, but the effects work is still pretty amazing—combinations of split-screens, double exposures, fade-in's, crash-edits, blue-screen and invisible wire-work.  Even though the ghost-tricks have been done (and...done to Death), some of them are still startling (how DID they do that thing with the dogs?!).  Clever and fun, and variations of the theme, so they don't over-use the same effect over and over again.

Nice cast, too.   Hard to believe this was Grant's first foray into the light comedy stance that would be his signature style for the rest of his career (Hollywood hadn't discovered this yet?) and studio stalwarts like Eugene Pallette, Alan Mowbray, and Arthur Lake (he'd become Dagwood in the "Blondie" movie series) making the most of their scenes.  There's even a brief musical interlude with Hoagy Carmichael!

Inventively realized by Norman Z. McLeod, who (having directed the Marx Brothers) knew how to get out of the way of performers and tighten things up for the movies, Topper is delightful, smart of concept and word, ingenious in execution, and a genuine crowd-pleaser...in this life or the next.

I Was a Male War Bride

I Was a Male War Bride (Howard Hawks, 1948) Hawks doing what he does best in a comedy—taking the finely chiseled speci-man that is Cary Grant and reducing him to a frustrated, humiliated wreck, robbing him of everything—dignity, decorum, manhood and sleep...mostly sleep.

In this one, Grant plays a Belgian in the French Army (in the same way he plays an American...as Cary Grant) in post-war Germany (it's actually based on a memoir—"I Was an Alien Spouse of Female Military Personnel en route to the United States Under Public Law 271 of the Congress" by the fellow this happened to) trying to break a black market operation with the help (and frequent hindrance) of Ann Sheridan.  They have history and start out loathing each other.  Along the way, he suffers bumpy rides in a motorcycle sidecar—in a rainstorm, no less—is nearly vaulted and scrunched by a barricade, paddles on the brink of a waterfall, climbs a pole (only to find that the sign, in German, says "Wet Paint"), is knocked off an awning from the second floor of a hotel, tossed in jail, and, in general, is made to suffer every indignity known to Man.

War is Hell, with several levels of humiliation, and its an everyday occurrence in this man's (and this woman's) Army.  If it's not a battle of the sexes. its a battle with bureaucracy, or the everyday battle with being a stranger in a strange land.  It is constant frustration, and Grant, outwardly so unflappable, is the master of its comic equivalent (as evidenced by such Hawks-Grant pairings as His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, and the non-Marx Monkey Business.  Grant was the perfect test-subject for emasculation and the break-down of the cool customer.

As is typical Hawks, the camerawork is nothing fancy; set the camera up at chest-level and let the actors go and just try to keep up with everyone jumping over roadblocks, whether made or wood or red tape.  Typical situation—getting married.  She's American.  He's Belgian.  They're in Germany.  So, there are three wedding ceremonies and so many "I do's" that there's no time for a honeymoon—leaving him with one big "I don't" ("Get some sleep" says one of the hoteliers to him, to which he replies "That's ALL I'm getting," which is a pretty racy comment for the time, but Hawks always liked to push the envelope and tweak the censors)—plus, she's getting re-assigned to America, while he's fresh out of the Army, something that he'd been looking forward to but is now complicated by...all the complications.  But the mark of a professional in the Hawks world is the ability to punt, to improvise, and heal quickly...and move on, or around.  It was a constant with this director, in front of and behind the camera.  To persevere, do the job, despite set-backs and soldier on was the measure of a man...or a male war bride.

Anytime Movies Reloaded: - Only Angels Have Wings

It's Spring-Break for me. Times are busy. The Summer Movie Season is already begun (and I'll be writing about the new ones) and the Film Festivals are grinding away like creaky mills separating wheat from chaff. It's as good a time as any to re-boot a feature I started years ago, when it was suggested I do a "Top Ten" List.

I don't like those: they're rather arbitrary; they pit films against each other, and there's always one or two that should be on the list that aren't because something better shoved it down the trash-bin.

So, I came up with this: "Anytime" Movies.

Anytime Movies are the movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it’s the direction, sometimes it’s the writing, sometimes it’s the acting, sometimes it’s just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again (and again!) and never tire of them. There are ten (kinda). They're not in any particular order, but the #1 movie IS the #1 movie.

While in college, I worked as a movie projectionist, and had an opportunity to show many great films for the various film courses being taught. But one film left a distinct impression—over the course of five days I had to show it eight times. I got to know it pretty well. Its name is “-Only Angels Have Wings” and it was directed by one of the great director-producers, Howard Hawks.

Hawks directed all types of movies, many of them classics of their genre: westerns (Rio Bravo, Red River); mystery/noir (The Big Sleep); adventure (To Have and Have Not, Hatari!) and comedy (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday). He even produced one of the first truly classic science fiction films (The Thing! [From Another World]), and an iconic musical (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Despite the genre, and despite the decade in which it was produced each film is unmistakably a Hawks film – a group of men (and women, but usually men) of diverse talents must come together to achieve a singular goal, be it to drive a huge herd of cattle to Missouri, or contain the alien threat, or capture a live rhinoceros, or get the bad guy to the Marshall (alive if possible) or ferry the refugees to safety, or find the dinosaur clavicle, or land a millionaire.

Conflict is achieved by introducing a newcomer to the mix who doesn’t understand the synergy of the group and who must learn “the code” to belong, and that keeps the group in cohesion. And so much the better if they do it without talking about it much.

That’s the Hawks formula, and he was able to create enough variations in the design that his films all seem different, even though they’re always telling the same basic story—a story that’s a metaphor for movie-making.*

“Hello, professional”

Why “-Only Angels Have Wings” out of all those classics? It is the ultimate Hawks movie. Watch any of those others and you’ll hear similar lines and see similar situations, but in “Angels,” everything is distilled to the basic essence of the tale to become the best Hemingway story Hemingway never wrote. Distilled? The majority of the film takes place in one set! For this band of professionals, the goal is to fly the mail from the port city of Barancca through a narrow passage in the Andes utilizing one of a number of prop aircraft, all in need of repair. The men realize they’re merely links in a chain getting the mail…or a doctor…or a shipment of nitro-glycerin…to its destination with the threat of death flying right alongside. So hazardous is the job for these civilian-pilots that their base is a revolving door for the new blood who have to prove themselves. It’s "The Right Stuff” twenty years before Tom Wolfe popularized the phrase.

And it’s prime Hawks. For instance, watch the cigarettes. In a Hawks film, they’re visual short-hand for relationships—who’s in need and who can provide, who’s giving, who’s dependable, giving, taking, reading other's thoughts, . More than any other Hawks film, except perhaps “Rio Bravo,” the flame that’s there when you need it is a gambit that crams twice the information into the film, and reveals more about the characters than their deliberately circumspect dialog—what Frank Capra called Hawks’s “three-corner dialog”—was allowed. To come right out and say things point-blank, well, not only would it be corny and unbelieveable…it just wasn’t done in Hawks's circles.

Hawks also liked to use music to convey mood. But it usually isn’t a Hollywood background score it's indigenous music—in this case, the bar band at Dutchy’s bar/mercantile and air terminal (this is a couple of years before “Casablanca”). They set the mood, provide a little extra entertainment value, some local color for a set-bound movie and when the time is right and there’s a meeting of minds it’s reflected in a musical number in which everyone participates. Again, no one has to come out and say ”We’re all thinking the same way.” They’re all singing the same song, so it’s understood.

"Boy, things happen fast around here, don't they?"

There’s also the unspoken ethos of the professional—you do your job to the best of your ability and you don’t talk about it. You don’t brag. You don’t cut corners and you don’t dwell on it. You do your job, you move on. You do your job right and people will notice. Do your job wrong and everyone suffers. In this way the group can depend on each other while staying out of their debt. In this movie-atmosphere, bit-players are allowed to shine. Yeah, the movie revolves around Cary Grant (and the only role where he would be more stoic than he is here would be playing the icy spy Devlin in Hitchcock’s “Notorious”) and the delightful Jean Arthur—she could turn on a dime from tragedy to comedy and not miss a step— but even the lowliest of character-actors get great moments of screen-time. Also of note are a very young Rita Hayworth at the start of her career and Richard Barthlemess—a former silent screen star who didn’t make the transition to “talkies.” He plays a pilot who must prove himself to the others and that he can “cut” it in their world. Art imitates life.

And then there’s Thomas Mitchell, who might well be the greatest character actor to never achieve name-above-the-title status. A veteran of many a Frank Capra comedy—and whose most prominent role would be as Scarlett O’Hara’s father in “Gone with the Wind”—here he plays a character with the title “The Kid,” even though he’s the oldest of the pilots. So much of the movie centers on him that his one character fulfills every plot device except love interest, although with Hawks one could never be too sure of that, either. **

Ultimately it’s Mitchell’s Kid who provides the means for Grant’s character to express his feelings, which, typically, he does without really having to, and in a way that makes it obvious to everybody involved. And as if anybody missed the point how dependent everyone is on each other, most of the pilots wind up injured, “winged” so that by the end of the movie, two pilots have to perform the job of one to fly each mail-run. Perhaps the better title may have been “-Only Angels Have Two Wings.”

It’s all done so economically, so breezily and with so little in the way of “action” that one may get through the entire movie before realizing that mostly everybody just talked…without really coming out and saying what they mean. Everything is shot at eye-level. There’s nothing fancy in the camera-work. The story is the King, and everyone is working towards making it work…like professionals.

Cary Grant needs a match. Jean Arthur carries a torch.

* Hawks was well-known for taking different stories and turning them into the Hawks formula, sometimes rewiting the entire film on a day to day basis to get there. The most extreme example of this is “El Dorado,” which after ten minutes of one story suddenly veers into becoming a remake of the earlier Hawks-John Wayne western “Rio Bravo.” When Hawks called John Wayne to ask if he’d star in yet another western, “Rio Lobo,” Wayne knew exactly what he was getting into. “Do I get to play the drunk this time?” he drawled.

** Someday, someone far more intelligent than I is going to go through the Hawks filmography with an eye towards sexual politics—whether it’s the leering banter between Montgomery Clift and John Ireland in “Red River,” or Cray Grant in drag in “Bringing Up Baby” (“I went GAY all of a sudden!!”) and “I Was a Male War Bride,” or some of the more bizarre stagings of musical numbers in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” And then there’s the long line of husky-voiced women in his movies who are one of “the boys,” from Rosalind Russell to Lauren Bacall all the way up to future Paramount Studios exec Sherry Lansing. For all the macho posturing exhibited in his movies, there are hints that Hawks never completely “bought” into it and is enjoying winking at it. He may well be second only to James Whale in sneaking so much gay subtext into his movies.


-Only Angels Have Wings
Chinatown
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
American Graffiti
To Kill a Mockingbird
Goldfinger
Bonus: Edge of Darkness

An Affair to Remember

"An Affair to Remember" (Leo McCarey, 1957) I'm of two minds about "An Affair To Remember," which is as it should be, as it's two movies: the deft romantic comedy on-board ship and the maudlin tragedy with musical numbers (by a kid's chorus)—not one of my favorite genres! The first part is terrific, and the second part is insufferable, at least to me, and shows the best and worst of director Leo McCarey.

Let's start with the good stuff, shall we? Two co-dependents, a gigolo and a "kept woman," meet on board a cruise that in practicality and the metaphoric sense represent escape from a pair of disasterous relationships. They "meet cute," and spend the rest of their cruise tryng to avoid each other in public, as he's an infamous playboy and she's just trying to maintain her reputation. It's a neat little cinematic problem (filmed in cruise-ship-length Cinemascope). They resolve to 1) jilt their lovers and their dependent life-styles and 2) vow to meet at the top of the Empire State Building in six months or once they're on their feet (ironic turn of phrase, that).

This part of the film is great fun because it's light and airy and features two performers who could do romantic comedy like no other (McCarey solidified Cary Grant as "Cary Grant" in the film "The Awful Truth"), and reflected the circumstances of filming. Grant is perfectly matched with Deborah Kerr, whose reputation as a comedienne has historically been given short-shrift. Here, the two characters conspire to meet in the close quarters of the ship, while avoiding detection by the nosey passengers. In real-life Grant and Kerr got on like a house-afire: Grant was nursing a broken-heart at the time of filming, and Kerr was a fellow British ex-pat with his sense of home and humor. You can see the chemistry between the two—at one point, Kerr flubs a line and the two don't break the scene, leaving Grant with a delighted look on his face, and Kerr making it feel like real-life. When they're separated as they leave the boat, the movie no longer floats, but founders with melodrama and tragedy.

McCarey (who directed "Duck Soup") falls back on an old Marx Bros. solution: to give the audience a little breathing room, throw in a few songs (a tactic that Groucho famously harpooned in "Horse Feathers" when he addresses the audience: "I have to stay here, but there's no reason you folks can't go to the lobby 'til this blows over.").

I'm even more cynical about this section of the film for a number of reasons, both having to do with McCarey. "An Affair To Remember" is a remake of McCarey's earlier "Love Affair" (1939, starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer),* and except for the wide-screen color photography and the songs nothing much changed, although it's easier to see Boyer as a European playboy (trying to pass off Cary Grant as Italian, is about as successful as passing him off as an American). Watching the film, McCarey's first after a couple of anti-communist propaganda pieces ("You Can Change the World" and "My Son John"), one begins to see it as McCarey's Pension Guarantee. He wears all the hats: co-writer, producer, director and—the part that rankles a bit—lyricist for all the Harry Warren songs in the film's last half. Nice gig that he hired himself for. And if any of those songs became a hit, he had money from the residuals for life.

I don't begrudge McCarey's double-dipping—this happened quite a bit in Hollywood when a producer could get away with it,** but one wonders--with a co-lyricist credited--just how much McCarey contributed to the songs. Me, I want to head for the lobby when the orchestra starts up (especially for such enduring classics as "TomorrowLand" and "The Tiny Scout," which lie at the bottom of Warren's prolific, accomplished output). They're padding, and prolong the wait to the inevitable reunion (which is given remarkably short-shrift) at the movie's end.
Also, there is a moment of revelation in "An Affair to Remember" that, hard to admit, is just beyond the considerable acting abilities of Cary Grant to pull off. McCarey blows that moment by leaving his camera on Grant the entire time when a cut-away (to what he's looking at) might have provided more dramatic weight (merely by the editing) to Grant's angst. Long takes are great, but there's an absence of information here that hurts the scene and what it's trying to convey. That we are also unprepared for that revelation by any fore-shadowing compounds the error.

And it is a mistake. In planning and execution.

One still seeks out McCarey films...especially the chance to see the film that didn't win the Academy Award for Best Picture (and he felt should have) the year "The Awful Truth" did—the sad and melancholy "Make Way for Tomorrow." It has yet to see a DVD release in this country.

* It was remade again, using the original title, by producer Warren Beatty and director Glenn Gordon Caron with Beatty, Annette Bening and Katharine Hepburn (in her last role) as Beatty's grandmother. The material about a lifelong lothario meeting the woman whom he chooses to settle down with, only to be separated by tragedy must have seemed particularly poignant to Beatty.

** Here's a nasty one: "The Theme from Star Trek." Written by Alexander Courage for the original series, producer Gene Roddenberry then penned completely unnecessary lyrics (beyond the South Sea Island "Aaa-aah's"), merely to skim half the proceeds from Courage's pay-check to himself. Nice guy. But he had the power to do it...so he did.

The Awful Truth

"The Awful Truth" (Leo McCarey, 1937) When Leo McCarey accepted his Oscar for Best Director for "The Awful Truth," (which also won "Best Picture" that year) he famously said in his acceptance speech "You gave it to me for the wrong one!" Having not seen "Make Way for Tomorrow" (the other one he did that year), one has to content oneself with the reputation of the Award-winner, which I was familiar with because of an in-joke Howard Hawks inserted into "Bringing Up Baby" a year later* But "The Awful Truth" was the crowd-pleaser (allowing Cary Grant to become a top-billed star--as opposed to here, where Irene Dunne leads), whereas "Make Way..." was a box-office disappointment.

Based on a successful stage-play by Arthur Richman (which had already been filmed twice before), "The Awful Truth" belongs to that sub-category of "Romantic Comedy," "Much Ado About Nothing," where squabbling couples take the consequences to the edge of divorcement, and back again.** The scriptwriters were Vina Delmar and Sydney Buchman (who wrote "Holiday," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "The Talk of the Town," "Here Comes Mr. Jordan," and was thanked by being blacklisted for refusing to name names). McCarey kept things moving briskly and encouraged the actors to ad-lib to increase the pace (McCarey also directed pictures featuring the Marx Brothers, where ad-libbing didn't need to be encouraged and, practically, couldn't be prevented!) Grant took to the technique particularly well--he wasn't comfortable in his role, and would have preferred to play Ralph Bellamy's part.*** His Jerry Warriner became a template for Grant's light comedy roles to follow. He's matched by Irene Dunne "the best actress to never win an Oscar," who may not excell at the off-hand remark, but knew how to fill space with a sarcastic faux-laugh. She could also effortlessly play foolish while maintaining a glamorous veneer--a trick she uses to great advantage in "The Awful Truth." Like the best of the "Much Ado.." comedies, "The Awful Truth" has a cynical bite to it, extolling the virtues of marriage, while acknowledging the way the new wine of romance turns to vinegar with time...and inattention. It also employs the comedy-generator of how taken away, one fights even harder to gain it back.

The comedy of "The Awful Truth" also has a buffered side to it. Everyone remains very genteel while seething a bit inside, and no one goes for a hay-maker remark, but are satisfied that the recipient feels the wind of the passing blow. Time and society would allow the knives to come out later, but for "The Awful Truth," just the suggestion of insult was enough.

Entertaining and a crowd-pleaser, "The Awful Truth" pales a bit in comparsion with its more savage progenitors, but to contemporary audiences it must have seemed like a roller-coaster ride.

* In "Bringing Up Baby," Susan (Katherine Hepburn) with most of the cast in jail, pretends to be a wise-cracking moll and refers to the hapless David as if he's a mob-boss named "Jerry The Nipper," which is a laugh-line regarding Grant's character in "The Awful Truth." Orson Welles also mentions McCarey's Oscar remark in his recorded remarks in "This is Orson Welles."

**Besides, "Much Ado...," such films in the sub-category include "The Philadelphia Story," "Private Lives," "His Girl Friday," "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," etc. Cary Grant excelled at them

*** Which provided another joke for Hawks in "His Girl Friday." When Grant's character is asked to sum up his ex-wife's (Rosalind Russell) fiancee, says "He reminds me of that actor...Ralph Bellamy," apt because Bellamy played the part!

- Only Angels Have Wings

While in college, I worked as a movie projectionist, and had an opportunity to show many great films for the various film courses being taught. But one film left a distinct impression—over the course of five days I had to show it eight times. I got to know it pretty well. Its name is “-Only Angels Have Wings” and it was directed by one of the great director-producers, Howard Hawks.

Hawks directed all types of movies, many of them classics of their genre: westerns (Rio Bravo, Red River); mystery/noir (The Big Sleep); adventure (To Have and Have Not, Hatari!) and comedy (Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday). He even produced one of the first truly classic science fiction films (The Thing! [From Another World]), and an iconic musical (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Despite the genre, and despite the decade in which it was produced each film is unmistakably a Hawks film – a group of men (and women, but usually men) of diverse talents must come together to achieve a singular goal, be it to drive a huge herd of cattle to Missouri, or contain the alien threat, or capture a live rhinoceros, or get the bad guy to the Marshall (alive if possible) or ferry the refugees to safety, or find the dinosaur clavicle, or land a millionaire.

Conflict is achieved by introducing a newcomer to the mix who doesn’t understand the synergy of the group and who must learn “the code” to belong, and to keep the group in cohesion. And so much the better if they do it without talking about it much.

That’s the Hawks formula, and he was able to create enough variations in the design that his films all seem different, even though they’re always telling the same basic story—a story that’s a metaphor for movie-making.*

“Hello, professional”


Why “-Only Angels Have Wings” out of all those classics? It’s the ultimate Hawks movie. Watch any of those others and you’ll hear similar lines and see similar situations, but in “Angels,” everything is distilled to the basic essence of the tale to become the best Hemingway story Hemingway never wrote. Distilled? The majority of the film takes place in one set! For this band of professionals, the goal is to fly the mail from the port city of Barancca through a narrow passage in the Andes utilizing one of a number of prop aircraft in need of repair. All the men realize they’re merely links in a chain getting the mail…or a doctor…or a shipment of nitro-glycerin…to its destination with the threat of death flying right alongside. So hazardous is the job for these civilian-pilots that their base is a revolving door for the new blood who have to prove themselves. It’s "The Right Stuff” twenty years before Tom Wolfe popularized the phrase.

And it’s prime Hawks. For instance, watch the cigarettes. In a Hawks film, they’re visual short-hand for relationships—who’s in need, who can provide, who’s giving, who’s dependable. More than any other Hawks film, except perhaps “Rio Bravo,” the flame that’s there when you need it is a gambit that crams twice the information into the film, and reveals more about the characters than their deliberately circumspect dialog—what Frank Capra called Hawks’ “three-corner dialog”—was allowed. To come right out and say things point-blank, well, not only would it be corny and unbelieveable…it just wasn’t done.

Hawks also liked to use music to convey mood. But it usually isn’t a Hollywood background score but indigenous music—in this case, the bar band at Dutchy’s bar/mercantile and air terminal (this is a couple of years before “Casablanca”). They set the mood, provide a little extra entertainment value, some local color for a set-bound movie and when the time is right and there’s a meeting of minds it’s reflected in a musical number in which everyone participates. Again, no one has to come out and say ”We’re all thinking the same way.” They’re all singing the same song, so it’s understood.

"Boy, things happen fast around here, don't they?"


There’s also the unspoken ethos of the professional—you do your job to the best of your ability and you don’t talk about it. You don’t brag. You don’t cut corners and you don’t dwell on it. You do your job, you move on. You do your job right and people will notice. Do your job wrong and everyone suffers. In this way the group can depend on each other while staying out of their debt. In this movie-atmosphere, bit-players are allowed to shine. Yeah, the movie revolves around Cary Grant (the only role where he’s more stoic than he is here would be playing the icy spy Devlin in Hitchcock’s “Notorious”) and the delightful Jean Arthur--she could turn on a dime from tragedy to comedy and not miss a step, but even the lowliest of character-actors get great moments of screen-time. Also of note are a very young Rita Hayworth at the start of her career and Richard Barthlemess—a former silent screen star who didn’t make the transition to “talkies.” He plays a pilot who must prove himself to the others and that he can “cut” it in their world. Art imitates life.

And then there’s Thomas Mitchell, who might well be the greatest character actor to never achieve name-above-the-title status. A veteran of many a Frank Capra comedy—and whose most prominent role would be as Scarlett O’Hara’s father in “Gone with the Wind”—here he plays a character with the title “The Kid,” even though he’s the oldest of the pilots. So much of the movie centers on him that his one character fulfills every plot device except love interest, although with Hawks one could never be too sure of that, either. **

Ultimately it’s Mitchell’s Kid who provides the means for Grant’s character to express his feelings, which, typically, he does without really having to, and in a way that makes it obvious to everybody involved. And as if anybody missed the point how dependent everyone is on each other, most of the pilots wind up injured, “winged” so that by the end of the movie, two pilots have to perform the job of one to fly each mail-run. Perhaps the better title may have been “-Only Angels Have Two Wings.”

It’s all done so economically, so breezily and with so little in the way of “action” that one may get through the entire movie before realizing that mostly everybody just talked…without really coming out and saying what they mean. Everything is shot at eye-level. There’s nothing fancy in the camera-work. The story is the King, and everyone is working towards making it work…like professionals.


*Hawks was well-known for taking different stories and turning them into the Hawks formula, sometimes rewiting the entire film on a day to day basis to get there. The most extreme example of this is “El Dorado,” which after ten minutes of one story suddenly veers into becoming a remake of the earlier Hawks-Wayne western “Rio Bravo.” When Hawks called John Wayne to ask if he’d star in yet another western, “Rio Lobo,” Wayne knew exactly what he was getting into. “Do I get to play the drunk this time?” he drawled.

** Someday, someone far more intelligent than I is going to go through the Hawks filmography with an eye towards sexual politics—whether it’s the leering banter between Montgomery Clift and John Ireland in “Red River,” or Cray Grant in drag in “Bringing Up Baby” (“I went GAY all of a sudden!!”) and “I Was a Male War Bride,” or some of the more bizarre stagings of musical numbers in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” And then there’s the long line of husky-voiced women in his movies who are one of “the boys,” from Rosalind Russell to Lauren Bacall all the way up to future Paramount Studios exec. Sherry Lansing. For all the macho posturing exhibited in his movies, there are hints that Hawks never completely “bought” into it and is enjoying winking at it. He may well be second only to James Whale in sneaking so much gay subtext into his movies.

Cary Grant needs a match. Jean Arthur carries a torch.

Anytime Movies are movies I can watch anytime, anywhere. If I see a second of it, I can identify it. If it shows up on television, my attention is focused on it until the conclusion. Sometimes it’s the direction, sometimes it’s the writing, sometimes it’s the acting, sometimes it’s just the idea behind it, but these are the movies I can watch again and again and never tire of them. There are ten. This is Number 4.

IV: -Only Angels Have Wings

V: The Searchers

X: Goldfinger