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One of several attempts to talk-up William A. Wellman's high flying "Wings" (1927) **********. This time, the leading threesome form the more traditional triangle of love -- younger Marine pilot Ralph Graves (as Lefty Phelps) and his mentor/Sergeant Jack Holt as (Panama Williams) are in both love with lovely nurse Lila Lee (as Elinor Murray). Ms. Lee loves Mr. Graves (in a romantic way). Mr. Graves loves Lee (in a romantic way) and Mr. Holt (in a fatherly way). Circumstances put the characters' relationships in turmoil, and danger…

An interesting early effort by director Frank Capra; but, of course, it is nowhere near his best. Harold Goodwin has a great supporting role (as Steve Roberts). Graves and Holt are a reliable team. Graves seems a little younger and Holt a little older than they appear; the actors are about the same age, however; and, they have a nice rapport.

Watch for a scene right after the "stuck in the mud" segment concludes -- in their tent, Holt scolds Graves for wanting to go out and get "tight"; he tries to pull his pal's shirt off, but Graves resists. Then, the men wrestle, which ends up with Holt pulling Graves' legs up to give him a spanking! As a bonus, Graves' hairpiece almost flips off his head!

The film is about two pilots--one who is the veteran flight instructor at Pensacola Naval Air Station (Tim Holt) and the other is a man who desperately wants to earn his wings, but he's terribly unsure of himself (Ralph Graves). Over time, a friendship develops between them that is challenged when both men fall for the same Navy nurse.

While all this might seem a bit predictable and clichéd, for 1929 it was pretty good stuff. Plus, all the familiar story elements contained in the film were NOT clichés, as this film introduced many of these items that would later become standard plot lines. Plus, the film is aided by excellent flying scenes and some amazingly fun and witty dialog every now and again. Graves made several comments that had me laughing. Because of this and the easy-going banter between them, this was a very likable film--particularly for nuts like me that adore early aviation films. The film abounds with great footage of aircraft and is a must-see for aviation fans.

By the way, the team of Graves and Holt made quite a few early military-inspired films for Columbia--making them the first stars for this fledgling studio. In addition to Marine pilots like they were in this film, they also starred in other films about US military (such as DIRIGIBLE, A DANGEROUS AFFAIR, FLYING FLEET and SUBMARINE). Oddly, despite their success, by 1931-1932, their careers as leading men were pretty much over.

One negative about the film is the sound quality. Though it does improve later in the film, FLIGHT is terribly in need of restoration as some of the dialog is very, very difficult to understand--a rather common problem with films from the early sound era. Closed captioning would have been nice, but was not included.

Flight (1929)

** (out of 4)

Frank Capra directed this early talkie about two buddies (Jack Holt, Ralph Graves) in the Navy Air Corps who fall in love with the same woman (Lila Lee). This film runs nearly two hours and one of those hours are brilliant but it's spread across the entire running time. The flight and war sequences are simply brilliant with a lot of realistic action and some breathtaking footage of the planes in the air. Had Capra only shown that stuff then this could have been another masterpiece from the director but sadly we get a stupid love story to drag everything down. Jack Holt is brilliant in his role adding a lot of humor to the part but Graves, who co-wrote the story, doesn't fair as well. Lila Lee is cute in her part but she's certainly not the greatest actress out there.

The plot is certainly familiar from many other movies, notably "Tell it to the Marines". The old timer versus the cheeky new recruit. And of course the girl that the sergeant wants is actually in love with the recruit, who feels rotten about it because the sergeant has been so nice to him. But the characters are interesting, particularly Jack Holt's,the camaraderie is nice to watch and there is plenty of action, flying scenes and battle scenes,fascinating shots of old time airplanes, all of which make this a fun movie to watch, which after all is the important thing in a movie of this type.Very pleasant entertainment in spite of the sound problems.

I recently saw this on Turner Classics. I had never seen this film from the early days of talking pictures before. Adding to its historic value is that it's directed by legendary Frank Capra from early in his career. Actor Ralph Graves who plays Lefty Phillips wrote the story, using two unrelated actual current events of the day to bookend his story; a wrong-way run in the Rose Bowl and a rogue general in Nicaragua. The Phillips character is based on Roy 'Wrong Way' Riegels who played for Cal-Berkeley against Georgia Tech in the 1929 Rose Bowl. He picked up a fumble, was spun around and ran 65 yards the wrong way before being stopped short of the opponent's goal. Lefty is distraught by the humiliation and goes on to join the Marines Navy Air Corps. Riegels would later join the Army Air Corps in WWII so it's kind of like art imitating life and then life imitating art. Jack Holt is Sgt. Panama Williams who trains the pilots. Lila Lee is nurse Elinor Murray, the love interest of both Panama and Lefty. Panama, Lefty and Elinor are all sent to Nicaragua where a rogue general and his guerrilla army have killed US Marines stationed there. In reality US Marines were in Nicaragua from 1927 to 1933. Small individual armies roamed the country and the US government was instituting a unified national guard and set up Anastasio Somoza Garcia to run it. General Augusto César Sandino was a guerrilla leader who's forces fought against the US Marines for five years. In this ficitonalized account of that conflict, Sandino is a character named Lobo played by Jimmy de la Cruze. Elmer Dyer who shot the aerial scenes for such Films as Hell's Angels, Lost Horizon, The Dawn Patrol and Air Force is the principal Ariel photographer on this film and Joe Novak and Joseph Walker are cinematographers. Howard J. Green wrote the screenplay from Graves' original story with additional dialogue from director Capra. Holt had the most successful and long- lived film career of the three lead actors. An established silent film star, he smoothly made the transition to sound films and had a long career in b-westerns and crime movies. Graves was a silent film actor who's continued success was limited to the 1930's. He made a couple films in the 40's in minor roles and then his career was over. Lee was at the peak of her career here having made 11 films in 1928, 9 in 1929 and 6 in 1930 before her career began to taper off. She was a promising silent film actor who never lived up to the expectations the studio had for her after making the transition from silents to sound. This isn't a great film. It's kind of silly and awkward at times but it's well done and fun to see a Capra film just seven years into his directorial career and the film has it's early sound and early aviation historic value. It's worth a look. I would give it a 6.5 out of 10.