I just watched this movie and have to say....if you are willing to pay attention, it is a very fine movie. Silent movies require that you put effort into the movie, but if you do, there are great dividends. I wager Buddy Roders life was very interesting....I also suspect that almost nobody ever heard of him. That's a shame.
shareI think it's just plain GREAT. No 'for its time' about it.
share"I wager Buddy Roders life was very interesting....I also suspect that almost nobody ever heard of him. That's a shame."
He's originally from the Kansas City area, so I've heard of him from that (I live in KC). He's probably best known for marrying Mary Pickford. Without looking at his IMDB page, I couldn't name another movie he was in.
According to IMDB Buddy lived to be like 95 years old (1904-1999). To see so all the historically unsurpassed changes in the world during the 20th century had to have been amazing.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it - Shaw
I have really mixed feelings about this movie. I'd give it a thumbs up but barely. Leonard Maltin's rating of two and a half stars actually seems better.
At times, it's a well-paced and dazzling melodrama- first rate melodrama. Very involving weeper war movie. Has what Pauline Kael would have called "filmmaking excitement".
Other times, it's cornball beyond belief. Makes me think of what an overrated B movie like "Pearl Harbor" that garners up a lot of undeserved awards and box office dollars from people who don't know any better would be like if it were made in 1927.
Other times, it's cornball beyond belief. Makes me think of what an overrated B movie like "Pearl Harbor" that garners up a lot of undeserved awards and box office dollars from people who don't know any better would be like if it were made in 1927.
I'm not sure what parts, specifically, you're referring to as "cornball beyond belief," unless it's the frequently panned romance between the Buddy Rogers and Clara Bow characters. But it helps to remember that this particular "cornball" element of the story probably had somewhat to do with "Wings" winning the Oscar, since the movie had appeal to men (action/war scenes and great aerial cinematography) and women (the love interest) viewers alike.
Not a comment on the movie, but a comment on Buddy Rogers.
My grandmother was born in 1918, so she would have been 9-years-old when this movie came out. I don't know if she saw this film or not, but I know she other films starring Buddy Rogers. We often talked about movies. She went to the movies very often when she was young, and Grandma and Poppop went to the movies several times a week when they were "courting". Grandma even kept a tablet listing all the movies she saw and who was in them -- and in her later years wished she had kept it. Until the day she passed away, May 1, 2007, she often talked about the crush she had on Buddy Rogers.
I also remember her older sister, a single woman and a career nurse (serving in the Army Nurses Corps in World War II and then in veterans' hospitals until she retired), looked at one of my movie books. She was in her seventies, and saw a picture of Ramon Navarro in a loincloth from "Ben-Hur." I remember she breathed a sigh and said, "They don't make men like them anymore."
Just some comments --
Spin
Judging movies over time is a tricky thing. Attitudes towards subject matter change, so that today we wouldn't look at a film like The Birth of a Nation, with its disgusting racism and massive historical inaccuracies and simply accept it the way most people did in 1915. On the other hand, you couldn't attack the movie because of its comparatively primitive equipment and techniques. You have to judge films with an understanding of the era in which they were made.
Wings is a ground-breaking film, mostly for its stunning flying sequences. While some people today may find its romantic interludes and broad humor "cornball", and this can be fair criticism, you also have to put these in context. Early, sweeping picture such as this, or Cimarron (1930), may have their dramatic faults by today's sensibilities, but they are great examples of filmmaking by any standards.
Oh, I corrected the annoying mistake in the thread title. It's means "it is". Its is the possessive. No apostrophe. Why do so many people have a problem with this? It's its.
And what about "Hell's Angels" which I have preferred over "Wings"?
A hydrocephalic takes pleasure in milking his cranial harp.
The aerial combat sequences are among the best of any time, because those were all real airplanes, many of them authentic WWI vintage. The CGI computer-game/cartoon planes in today's movies can't compare to the real deal.
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