by Chris Marshall:
When I decided to undergo my Best Picture project, I knew that the very first winner, a 140 minute silent film, would be a major hump to get past. I’ve seen several silents before, but they have tended to be comedies, which I think hold up much better than their dramatic counterparts. Wings, which is a romance/action hybrid set in World War I, did not offer the prospect of much comic relief.
When I decided to undergo my Best Picture project, I knew that the very first winner, a 140 minute silent film, would be a major hump to get past. I’ve seen several silents before, but they have tended to be comedies, which I think hold up much better than their dramatic counterparts. Wings, which is a romance/action hybrid set in World War I, did not offer the prospect of much comic relief.
As it turned out, there were some laughs, but I’m not
convinced they were intentional. “Herman Schwimpf? What kind of name is that
for fighting the Kaiser?!” is an example, especially when coupled with
Schwimpf’s “proof” of his patriotism: an American flag tattooed on his flabby
bicep. Indeed, the American army, as portrayed in the film at least, was an
exceptionally pasty, out-of-shape bunch. That may well have been the case at
the time, but the net result was one of the least intimidating fighting forces imaginable.
Such concerns aside, however, the movie holds up quite well
85 years later, and I was impressed by how “modern” it seemed in many respects.
The aerial dogfight scenes in particular were spectacular, and I still haven’t
figured out how they pulled off one scene in a Paris nightclub, where the
camera slowly zooms over table after table toward the drunken protagonist. It
had the feel of a Steadicam shot, except that the Steadicam wouldn’t be
invented for almost half a century.
