Only Anglos Have Wings

Speaking of Aviation, just watched Only Angels Have Wings, Howard Hawks' 1939 jungle aviation film starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur and Rita Hayworth. I had forgotten how awesome it is - I swear it could hold its own with Casablanca.

The plot: Cary Grant runs a small airstrip in Barranca, a port city in So. America. If they can fly the mail everyday on schedule over dangerous mountain passes, they will get a generous contract. This enterprise has killed two pilots before the start of the movie, and will kill more before the end.

Entertainer Jean Arthur's ship stops for a few hours, but in that time, she falls in love with Grant, and stays on. But he can't let a woman get too close. They will only worry and try to keep him from flying.

Hawks keeps ratcheting up the tension. He makes you like characters, then kills them. He makes you hate characters, then sends them up to die and dares you to root for them. And he loads his characters with huge loads of pain, guilt and choice.

Especially the women. Because, more than once, his characters explain that it is all women's fault, for caring too much or not enough, for distracting pilots, for mourning them, for existing. And Hawks only lets them be happy when they take the blame and submit. OK, so you have to put up with a little misogyny in these old movies.

And then there's the racism. In Barranca, only white Anglos can run serious businesses. The pilots have local women, but they are not to be compared to the white women like Jean Arthur. When Jean Arthur acknowledges one of these women, it's a shock. It never happens again. The local doctor is played for laughs.

I shouldn't even mention Cary Grant's white suit, Panama hat and hand-tooled pistol holsters. I'm pretty sure we're not meant to snicker.

So, brilliant film-making with some baggage from the period? Or painfully insulting movie barely redeemed by craft? For me, the former. But I'm a white male. I first saw this with the future Ms. Spenser in college, and we both loved it. It was part of Our Story. Watching it now, she was not so taken in.

Why don't you be the judge?