Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

Only Angels Have Wings is an American romantic film drama first released in 1939, directed by Howard Hawks.  The film stars Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth and Thomas Mitchell.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


In the South American port of Barranca, Geoff Carter runs a two-bit air freight company, employing a small but dedicated team who fly mail over the treacherous Andes.  One day, piano-player Bonnie Lee arrives in the town, with time to kill before she heads back to her home in the United States on another boat.  She strikes up an immediate friendship with two of Geoff’s employees and is devastated when, a short while later, one of them is killed when he crashes his aeroplane.  Bonnie finds it hard to understand the apparent lack of emotion shown by the dead man’s friends and employer, and yet she is strangely drawn to Geoff.  Matters are complicated when Geoff’s ex-wife Judy turns up with her husband, Bat Kilgallen, the latter looking for work as a pilot.  Geoff is reluctant to offer Kilgallen work, since he is known to have once parachuted out of a distressed plane, leaving his mechanic to die.  After a frantic appeal from Judy, Geoff finally takes Kilgallen on, but on the understanding that he will undertake the most dangerous missions.  One man who resents the newcomer’s arrival is the Kid, one of Geoff’s older employees, who happens to be the brother of the man who Kilgallen left to die...

Widely regarded as the greatest of Howard Hawks’ many cinematic achievements, Only Angels Have Wings is a tense and compelling character study which vividly portrays the anxieties and conflicts within a tight-knit group of men who try to cope with the dangers inherent in their profession.  The film is distinguished by Hawks’s faultless direction (which is clearly informed by his previous experience as a professional aviator) and some remarkable performances from a great cast. 

Cary Grant is a long way from the smooth charmer that he would become in later years.  Here, he is a cynical, thick-skinned and irredeemably jaded action man, seemingly impervious to the charms of both Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth, apparently consumed by the work which may one day ruin or destroy him.  Grant was a far more versatile actor than many now give him credit for, and this film amply bears this out.   He had  previously appeared in Hawks’s groundbreaking screwball Bringing Up Baby (1938) and would subsequently work with the director on three similar comedies, including the legendary His Girl Friday (1940).

In her first substantial purely dramatic role, Rita Hayworth is convincing and eyecatching as a manipulative vamp, but she is outclassed and out-performed by Jean Arthur, who is perfectly cast as the sensitive outsider who is tasked with restoring some humanity to the man she falls for.  Virtually overlooked when it was first released, Only Angels Have Wings is now regarded as one of Hollywood’s finest achievements, and rightly so.

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