Welcome to Panning for Gold, my new series looking back at every Best Picture winner in the history of the Oscars. Each newsletter will go over some of the other nominees, some historical context for each movie, and a brief review.
Today’s entry is William A. Wellman’s “Wings,” a silent WWI epic about two American pilots and the women they love. But before we get into that, some quick notes:
I’m overjoyed that “Everything Everywhere All At Once” won Best Picture at the 95th Oscars last night. Excited to watch it for (at least) a third time for this series next year. Laundry and taxes, baby.
Quantifying art in any way is a fool’s errand, but that’s why we do it in the first place. It’s why we make Top 10 lists and it’s why the Academy gives out awards like this. Granted, many of the films on this list won because of aggressive political campaigning, but I believe looking at which films were nominated each year can give a glimpse into what we as a country were experiencing at the time.
If I’ve seen any of the other nominees, I’ll mention it, but I don't expect that to happen until the late ‘30s.
The year referenced in each entry is for the year the ceremony took place (“EEAAO” won in 2023 but was released in 2022, for example). “Wings” was released in 1927 and played in theaters until 1928, but the first Academy Awards wasn’t until 1929.
OK, let’s get started.
Other Best Picture Nominees
“7th Heaven,” another silent WWI romance
“The Racket,” a silent crime drama
Other Awards
Best Engineering Effects
The Stats
Director: William A. Wellman
Writers: Julian Johnson (titles), Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton (screenplay), John Monk Saunders (story)
Producers: Lucien Hubbard, Adolph Zukor, Jesse L. Lasky, B.P. Schulberg, Otto Hermann Kahn
Starring: Clara Bow, Charles “Buddy” Rogers, Richard Arlen, Gary Cooper
Cinematography: Harry Perry
Editing: E. Lloyd Sheldon
Studio: Paramount
Running time: 144 minutes
The Context
WWI ends in 1918
Charles Lindbergh flies the Spirit of St. Louis on the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France from May 20-21, 1927, starting a national interest in planes
The first Academy Awards, hosted by Academy president Douglas Fairbanks, take place on May 16, 1929. (Much has been written about how the Oscars were invented to bust unions. More on that here.)
The Movie
It’s clear that the “Oscar bait” formula was there from the beginning.
Nostalgia and a war film after a horrible war just ended less than a decade prior? Check. A leading lady (Bow) billed above the line but not getting much screentime? Check. Lots of spectacle, a huge budget, a long running time and a heartbreaking ending? Checks all down the line.
And yet, almost 100 years later, even with no sound, this still works like gangbusters. It was popular back then, too. The love square is the weakest part — Mary is in love with Jack, who’s in love with Sylvia, who’s in love with David. The effects, especially for the times, shine. All of the dogfights invented a film language still employed today. Wellman, a former military pilot himself, lent his expertise to the proceedings.
There is no “Top Gun” or “Star Wars” without “Wings,” and both quote this movie extensively. “The Last Jedi” even pays homage to one of the most famous scenes from “Wings”:
Watching it now, I realized it shares a lot of DNA with “Pearl Harbor,” Michael Bay’s WWII romance epic (or, rather, “Pearl Harbor” shares a lot of DNA with “Wings”) about two men who love the same woman. The friendship between Jack and David lends “Wings” its heart more than any romantic relationship ever could, which is what makes the film’s ending stick.
Finally, this made me realize I have a huge gap in silent film knowledge. I spent most of my time watching this film marveling at how it was made and wondering how the plane scenes were filmed (in San Antonio, no less).
At times it was hard to adjust my brain to watching intertitles instead of subtitles, even if they featured great sentences like “So Youth laughed and wept and lived its heedless hour, while over the world hung a cloud which spread and spread until its shadow fell in some degree on every living person.”
My only real issue is that I now have the film’s piano nickelodeon score stuck in my head — not because it was good, but because it was the same 24 bars repeated for nearly two-and-a-half hours. That also makes me wonder if those piano players had to play the same song for a whole movie or if they played a phonograph recording. Either way, a lot of key-mashing.
That wraps it up for now. I’ll be back on Friday with 1929’s winner: “The Broadway Melody.”
All ‘Panning For Gold’ newsletters
This newsletter is written by me and edited by my favorite person, Taylor Tompkins. Views expressed here are my own and don’t reflect the opinions of my employer.
If there’s anything you want to see covered in a future newsletter, let me know!
You can find me in other corners of the internet as well, if you so choose. There’s Friends At Dusk, my podcast about Christopher Nolan films; my personal website (which focuses on pop culture, stories about religion and my journalism clips); a Twitter account and a Letterboxd account. Subscribe away.