Only Angels Have Wings gets a long over­due home release

A pilot in World War One who also dab­bled in race car dri­ving, Howard Hawks was a thrill seek­er who liked mak­ing movies that invit­ed the view­er into adven­ture with a group of friends or a team, the ulti­mate pur­vey­or of on-screen cama­raderie. Only Angels Have Wings is one of the stand­outs of his impres­sive career, but also one of his most sober­ing films. With a frank atti­tude towards death and a roman­tic yet melan­choly view of life on the edge, it’s an exis­ten­tial­ly tough work of blunt philosophy.

The sto­ry fol­lows a young woman named Bon­nie (Jean Arthur) who lands in Bar­ran­ca in South Amer­i­ca and winds up at a bar with a cou­ple of Amer­i­cans. It turns out they’re pilots risk­ing their lives on dai­ly basis work­ing for an air­mail com­pa­ny. The boss is Geoff Carter, played by Cary Grant at his most firm and stal­wart. After some fun Hawk­sian hang­ing out, things get real when Geoff sends Joe, one of the fel­las talk­ing up Bon­nie, up into the air in some less than ide­al weath­er. He doesn’t make it back alive, crash­ing just off the land­ing strip. The reac­tion to his death by Geoff and co (includ­ing Thomas Mitchell’s faith­ful ​“Kid” Dabb, Geoff’s right hand) is not what Bon­nie would expect.

Eat­ing, drink­ing and gen­er­al antics con­tin­ue in the bar as if noth­ing hap­pened. As Hawks him­self describes in an invalu­able audio excerpt from an inter­view with Peter Bog­danovich, when men are liv­ing in a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, they can’t ​“sit around moan­ing or they’d be moan­ing all the time.” Behind the harsh­ness of their behav­iour lies a sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty. As Bon­nie begins to fall for Geoff, she slow­ly begins to under­stand their way of life.

Tak­ing place most­ly in the saloon that Geoff runs the com­pa­ny out of, the film cre­ates a vivid sense of of the lifestyle of these dare­dev­il pilots. The inside is a place of com­ing togeth­er, bond­ing, for­get­ting the world out­side. Right out­side the bar is the land­ing strip, always filmed sep­a­rate from the inte­ri­or as a sep­a­rate world, one of near cer­tain death, an abyss that only these men are brave enough to nav­i­gate. Twice in key moments Bon­nie is filmed fac­ing the land­ing strip, framed by the door­way of the saloon, gaz­ing at the bewil­der­ing world of dan­ger Geoff choos­es to live in.

Hawks skill­ful­ly cre­ates an ensem­ble of rela­tion­ships that inter­sect with elec­tric under­tones of desire, love, respect, and admi­ra­tion. Though not as pure­ly enter­tain­ing as Rio Bra­vo or any of his come­dies, Only Angels Have Wings is Hawks’ most mov­ing film. Just issued by the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion in the US and now one of the label’s first UK releas­es, the restora­tion is char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sub­lime. The sup­ple­ments include the above inter­view, as well as an infor­ma­tive read­ing from David Thomson.

Hawks and His Avi­a­tion Movies is a rather dry interview/​video piece that nev­er­the­less offers some insid­er knowl­edge into Hawks’ film­ing of aer­i­al footage and how he bal­anced shoot­ing real fly­ing with mod­el work, and the meth­ods of incor­po­rat­ing it all into the movie. A radio play adap­ta­tion of Only Angels Have Wings host­ed by Cecil B DeMille is an intrigu­ing curios­i­ty but you’re best to stick with the film itself.

In Michael Sragow’s live­ly essay on the film includ­ed in the lin­er notes, he shares a won­der­ful quote from Hawks admir­er and film­mak­er Wal­ter Hill on Only Angels Have Wings: ​“Here we are, a tight lit­tle group, and it’s dark out there, and ulti­mate­ly we are alone, saved only by the grace of the human spir­it: friend­ship, sex, courage…Wonderful film.”

Only Angels Have Wings is avail­able via the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion.