ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS is a film in the CASABLANCA mold: compact, classical storytelling in the hands of capable craftsmen. This is what you should expect when you sit down for a classic, and I'm happy to tell you that ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS will not disappoint. Hawks' 1939 aviation drama paints a thrilling, stirring picture of the consequences of life lived to its extremes. In Barrancas, South America, emotions run as high as the planes, an inevitability when each flight carries the risk of death with it. The men who fly have learned to accept this, but things aren't so easy for Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur, luminous) when she finds herself caught up in the self-denying game of masculinity.
Navigating the treacherous Andes mountain range by plane takes more than raw skill. It takes an almost suicidal willingness to see a mission through to its end. Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) has internalized this law of the land to such a degree that it's won him the undying respect of his comrades, but such foolhardy bravery has cost him one woman's heart already and risks the love of another. That woman, Jean Arthur, plays coy and confident in her first few scenes, at one point wielding a sword to fend off the unwelcome advances of a pair of admirers, but as soon as Cary Grant enters the arena, it's all over for Connie. Geoff Carter, decked out in such overtly masculine signifiers as a sombrero, leather jacket, and belt of ammunition, is a hard man to resist. He radiates manly self-assurance and confidence in everything he does, and Connie is smitten soon after meeting him.And really, how couldn't she be? Cary Grant plays this daredevil character as the polar opposite of his effeminate, shrinking Dr. David Huxley in Hawks' equally excellent BRINGING UP BABY. I am somewhat new to the charms of Cary Grant, but he has impressed me greatly in everything he's done so far, and his versatility should serve as a model to any modern aspiring actor. Likewise, Jean Arthur is new to me, but she embodies the Hawksian woman par excellence. Her character more than holds her own in a room full of interested men, and one suspects she would have her pick of the lot had Cary Grant not walked in and shut down the competition. Their scenes together sparkle, and it's not hard to believe each would find themselves utterly won over by the other.
Their romance, however, is complicated by Geoff's commitment to honoring the masculine code of the times. I have a feeling even viewers in the late 30s and early 40s would have picked up on the demands of masculinity Geoff assuredly but self-sacrificially endures. To our modern and (supposedly) more liberal eyes, this human tragedy is only heightened. As he and several other characters remark, Geoff takes the toughest missions for himself and lives a life devoted to the present because the present, in his eyes, is the only thing we're guaranteed. Connie is taken in by Geoff's heroic self-devotion, but it soon becomes a bigger burden than she can handle.
Matters are complicated by the arrival of Bat McPherson (Richard Barthelmess) and his wife Judith (Rita Hayworth). McPherson, in contrast to Geoff's esteemed trustworthiness, has committed the ultimate sin in ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS' trial-by-fire environment: unreliability. His 'cowardice' in a previous mission led him to abandon his plane by parachute, resulting in the death of another. That man's brother, known as "The Kid" (Thomas Mitchell), flies with the company to this day. Needless to say, the arrival of McPherson doesn't sit well with The Kid. Understandable. But one of the keener observations of this film is how the group of men of which The Kid counts himself a member rally around him and his loss. They too dislike McPherson, despite never personally being wronged by him. But as screenwriter Jules Furthman (responsible for another of my 30s favorites, MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY) well understands, the pain of one man is the pain of all.
Let's take a short detour into masculinity and what it means to be a man. In the interest of full disclosure, I feel it's my duty to tell you I've never much preferred the company of men. This is too big a topic to fully cover in this review, but perhaps the most salient aspect of that preference is my dislike of the way men hide their feelings. This is my own personal take on the matter, but I don't think I would be incorrect to say it's a sentiment shared by many women as well. I've seen that frustration at work in the emotional lives of many female friends, and I've seen it explored as a theme in many works of fiction. Men are difficult. Emotional openness in men is not valued in many cultures. The reasons for that are also too numerous and complex to fully explore in this space, but this is a defining feature of many works of art made by and for men in the United States. ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS is no exception. The difference, and what I believe elevates it to the realms of filmic greatness, is how sensitively the issue is dealt with in this particular film.
To examine this in full, we'll need to go back to the beginning. I was immediately struck how quickly the gay mood of the South American bar in which much of this film takes place was dissolved by the death of a reckless pilot. The tragedy hangs large over the rest of the film, both in its specificity and in its indicativeness of the dangers frequently faced by the expatriate pilots. It's difficult to become attached to people whose presence is far from guaranteed in your life. The men of ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS know this instinctively. It's a lesson they've probably been taught all their lives, and it sees itself expressed most fully in the life-or-death circumstances to which they've all volunteered (/sacrificed?) themselves. In such an environment, happiness and companionship are temporary. Men here die often and violently, and learning to deal with loss is one of the unspoken requirements of surviving in Barrancas. Bonnie is disgusted with the men in general and Geoff in particular when they laugh and drink away the pain of their comrade's passing, but what she fails to realize is that this seeming irreverence isn't born out of indifference. It's the only way these men know how to deal with the hugeness of death. Cigarettes, alcohol, and women all serve as tools to beat away the personal anguish this job often offers up. Bonnie's arc in the film is one of learning to look past the desperate disavowal of emotions embodied by the men and in particular her object of affection, the lonely and brave Geoff Carter.
To serve as a contrast to the challenge Bonnie must face in adapting to this emotionally hostile environment, it's eventually revealed that Rita Hayworth's Judith is the woman Geoff loved and lost. Bonnie perceptively posits Geoff's essential hardness as being at least partly the result of a broken heart. Geoff grudgingly admits she may have a point, but he knows his job requires this hardness of him. Being the boss of an airline requires the cold logic of both commerce and managerial prowess. Geoff must take care of both his pilots and his cargo, a responsibility in which emotion can tragically play no part. His reticence drove away Judith, now married to Geoff's shamed colleague.
Rita Hayworth doesn't get much to do in this film, cast somewhat regrettably as a seductress against whom Geoff proves his emotional fidelity to both McPherson and Bonnie. But she does her best with her marginal part, conveying well the pain of having lost one great love and the threat of losing another. Judith, we find out, doesn't know about her husband's dark past, though she can tell something's amiss by the way the pilots treat him. Alone in her confusion with her husband's life ever at risk, reminded by Geoff's presence of the love she feels she'll never be fully promised, her outbursts speak of the stress she can normally tolerate until, as we might expect, the weight of it all fully strikes her. Geoff can only look on in practiced remove as the woman he once loved rails against his live-and-let-die attitude, the time when he could prove his love to her long since passed.
But Geoff's not just a tragic character, a lost soul in the cogs of capitalism. Outwardly, his reasoning for being so distant is to save the women in his life the pain of losing him. This I suspect is true enough, though certainly only one facet of it. Geoff does in fact care for those around him, despite being largely incapable of expressing that compassion. His fairness is demonstrated through the pity he extends to the disgraced McPherson. The others have long ago given up on him, but Geoff recognizes the weakness in McPherson because he too has experienced it. But rather than scorning McPherson for not being as brave as he continually proves himself, Geoff grants McPherson a second chance and allows him to fly in his company. Barthelmess smartly underplays his character's gratitude, and this muted dynamic humanizes both McPherson and Geoff, our previously unreachable hero. The mutual recognition of weakness leads to a private understanding they dare not express to their hardhearted companions.
This small moment of male camaraderie speaks to me more than any number of lone rangers' heroic conquests in countless other movies. Blockbusters often fail to grip me not because of their emotional coldness, but because of the valorization of that coldness. Such haughty self-possession runs contrary to my personal philosophy. We as humans are at our best when we defy our social Darwinist animal nature and help one another, when we allow ourselves to feel the pain of others and react accordingly. My least favorite people, many of whom are men, can't help but laugh in the face of another's weakness. I too can see the weakness and discomfort they're hiding through their outward displays of socially approved emotional strength, but it doesn't make me any more sympathetic to them. Grace and forgiveness are qualities that defy this ongoing masculine self-actualization, and to me only the greatest men are able to express them. When I was younger I found deep beauty in the Bible's tender and humane depiction of Jesus, truly the living embodiment of this philosophy. He remains a unique world historical figure to this day, the man who wanted better for the world than he was able to give it, but still trying mightily to make that change imaginable. If church held any promises for me in those days, it was in the annex between my earthly confusion and a deity's blessed purity. Even as a child, I wanted the world to be safe for me and the people I loved. So I still find myself hewing surprisingly close to those Christian ethics floating ineffably my childhood so long ago, my latter-day feminist conversion no strong opponent to ideals of Christ-like humility and acceptance. It seems strange, but I'm in some ways a better Christian now as an atheist than I was as a believer. Maybe we never change as much as we think we do.
Going back to the film, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS has nothing but patience for these lost and confused souls, away from all semblance of stability and security in a country they barely know. Their endurance is commendable, but it's their transcendence of mere survivalism that makes a select few of them great. Geoff, for his part, learns to work through his emotional unavailability in a small but lovely moment at the very end, but we can see his humanity in the way he gradually becomes so flustered by Connie and her forthrightness. Viewing him efficiently at work as we do, these expressions of confusion and sheepishness become even more significant by contrast. Cary Grant knows better than to openly go to pieces at Jean Arthur's charm, but his endearingly slight slips in confidence (winningly played by Grant and Arthur in a screwballesque pas de deux) speak volumes about his hidden magnanimity while simultaneously acknowledging the hopeless trap of denying one's love for another.
Nevertheless, Hawks' film most truly displays its brilliance when Connie, in a strange but inspired touch, accidentally shoots and thereby grounds Geoff. This subconscious expression of need manifested leads The Kid, earlier grounded for his failing sight, and McPherson, heretofore only treated as human by Geoff, to fly a plane together into the mountains in a torrential downpour. Both are wary of each other, but as in real life, men show their love for each other sometimes in the unlikeliest of ways. The two pilots bullheadedly ignore Geoff's command to turn back and continue on only to meet disaster. The Kid is rendered helpless, and in this moment of peril McPherson finds it in himself to ignore the by now extremely real risk of death to stay with the plane and its incapacitated passenger. I'll leave you to find out for yourself what happens to the two of them, but suffice to say the film has proved its point. It's the people who aid you at your most vulnerable that exemplify the best in humanity.
(photo credit: www.dvdbeaver.com)
