Howard Hawks' The Dawn Patrol (1930) may be the gold standard. I don't have a complete review of it, but I did write about the 1938 remake which I discovered first. Everything about the pre-Code original is better except perhaps for Basil Rathbone.
William Dieterle's The Last Flight (1931) is set almost entirely post-war, but I would still give it pride of place if anyone asked me to program a festival of this stuff. rachelmanija, this film is chock-full of traumatized aviators and I love it. I wrote a poem about one of its characters once.
Stuart Walker and Mitchell Leisen's The Eagle and the Hawk (1933) is mid-war with trauma in spades and I thought of it while reading this review of The Camels Are Coming. Fredric March is electrifyingly difficult to watch. The whump just keeps on coming.
I called Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) a hot mess and I stand by it, but the aviation sequences are so good that I recommend the film to anyone with an interest in this era of flying. The dogfights are fucking terrifying! There's a zeppelin crash! I don't care that most of the dialogue is of the species George, you can type this shit, but you sure can't say it, I still want to see it on a big screen.
RKO's The Lost Squadron (1932) is two-thirds not good, but since the third that is good is actually trying to grapple with what a bunch of flying aces do with themselves after the war and the answer is stunt flying for Hollywood, I really want to rescue those scenes into a better film. I would not by any stretch of the imagination call it essential, but it has some neat ideas.
I have never managed to see Ace of Aces (1933) even though Guy Maddin adores it. Wings (1927) is legendary and I've just never written about it. I really think of Only Angels Have Wings as being part of this cycle, even a generation on. There's also a peculiar cluster of commercial aviation films in the 1930's of which Angels was clearly a part, of which I have seen fewer than the actual war films but which seem to be tapping into some of the same tropes and questions. Further research required.
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Date: 2022-10-19 02:39 am (UTC)Okay!
Howard Hawks' The Dawn Patrol (1930) may be the gold standard. I don't have a complete review of it, but I did write about the 1938 remake which I discovered first. Everything about the pre-Code original is better except perhaps for Basil Rathbone.
William Dieterle's The Last Flight (1931) is set almost entirely post-war, but I would still give it pride of place if anyone asked me to program a festival of this stuff.
Stuart Walker and Mitchell Leisen's The Eagle and the Hawk (1933) is mid-war with trauma in spades and I thought of it while reading this review of The Camels Are Coming. Fredric March is electrifyingly difficult to watch. The whump just keeps on coming.
I called Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930) a hot mess and I stand by it, but the aviation sequences are so good that I recommend the film to anyone with an interest in this era of flying. The dogfights are fucking terrifying! There's a zeppelin crash! I don't care that most of the dialogue is of the species George, you can type this shit, but you sure can't say it, I still want to see it on a big screen.
RKO's The Lost Squadron (1932) is two-thirds not good, but since the third that is good is actually trying to grapple with what a bunch of flying aces do with themselves after the war and the answer is stunt flying for Hollywood, I really want to rescue those scenes into a better film. I would not by any stretch of the imagination call it essential, but it has some neat ideas.
I have never managed to see Ace of Aces (1933) even though Guy Maddin adores it. Wings (1927) is legendary and I've just never written about it. I really think of Only Angels Have Wings as being part of this cycle, even a generation on. There's also a peculiar cluster of commercial aviation films in the 1930's of which Angels was clearly a part, of which I have seen fewer than the actual war films but which seem to be tapping into some of the same tropes and questions. Further research required.