Wings is a silent film from 1927 that won the Academy Award for Most Outstanding Production, an award that existed only that year, prior to the existence of Best Picture. The storyline is trite: It is a story of a woman, Mary, who loves a man that is in love with another woman, a city girl who had interests only in money. Mary and he were neighbors as children and always very close. She always had a crush on him, but he never did on her. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in the end, that Mary would win the man over and they would be together. The plot also takes some highly unlikely and laughable twists to make this happen.
We laughed as we watched the movie, and marveled at the simplicity of its story line. The acting was what is to be expected from an old silent film — exaggerated and simple. The dogfight scenes in the movie are particularly impressive, especially when you take into consideration that there wasn’t the technology back then to simulate the footage. These scenes are the only time we ever felt as though we were watching something epic. And epic they were. They alone make the movie worth watching.
Watching a silent film was also an experience. I will admit that we both fell asleep at different times throughout the film. The predictable series of events did not exactly arouse our interest and curiosity. And it was late.
Overall, we enjoyed the experience. Watching a full-length silent film was a unique experience and catching a glimpse into 1927 pop culture was even more exciting. The film had a very “pro-american” bias to it, with lines such as “Swift and straight as arrows of vengeance came the two Americans…” dominating the commentary during fight scenes.
Here are a couple quotes from the movie, so you can get an idea of how epic the dialog was. We still quote these on occasion:
“D’you know what you can do when you see a shooting star? You can kiss the girl you love.”
“She has bubbles even in ‘er eyes – she wins – “