I am glad that I did decide to do this challenge because it's going to make me watch movies that I might not otherwise watch. Wings being one of them.
Now in the title I know that it says that it was the best picture of two different years. Well when the first few years of the Academy Awards they did it by non-calendar year. So, the first few of these movie are not going to be for one year. Also, in the first few years of the Academy Awards they only allowed five films to be nominated. We are used to there being ten nominated films because the rules were changed in 2009 to have between five to ten movies nominated.
But I digress.
Wings was produced by Paramount, Main producer was Lucien Hubbard, and was release August 12, 1927. The film had a 2 Million Dollar budget, and that was money in 1927 equivalent to about 26 Million Dollars today. It is one of two silents films to win the Best Picture Award (the other surprisingly is The Artist which was released in 2011). The film also won Best Effects, Engineering Effects at the Academy Awards that same year. The Effects were done by Roy Pomeroy. The film was thought to be lost until 2012 when it was found, restored, and redistributed for a limited time in the movies. In 1997 it was officially put into the National Film Registry for being the first film to win Best Picture.
Wings was in contest for Best Picture agaistn Howard Hughes's The Racket (1928) also with Paramount, and William Fox's Seventh Heaven (1927) from Fox.
The Movie is about two young men, who are in love with the same woman, going off to fight in World War I. The stars of the film are Clara Bow, who plays Mary Preston a young girl infatuated with a Jack Powell. Charles "Buddy" Rogers plays Jack Powell he is the "boy next door turn war hero" of our story. He thinks he is love with a girl named Sylvia, Jobyna Ralston, but in reality he is in love with the idea of her. It takes the whole film for him to realize where his heart really lies. Jack starts off hating another young man from him hometown, reason is because this young man is in love with Sylvia too. This wealthy, and handsome, character is named David Armstrong who is played by Richard Arlen. The plot of this movie is how these two men form a true friendship, despite them loving the same girl, during the struggles and tragedies of the war.
Once you see the film you quickly see why this film won best effects. The Director, William A. Wellman, wanted to make a movie about the war as realistic as possible. This is the film in which all war movies would be compared to. This was the film that changed how action sequences were shot to begin with. A lot of thought and preparation was put into the film. During this time when films were shot in about two months, this film took nine months to shoot. Wellman wanted everything to be as realistic as possible. Since he was an aviation pilot in World War I himself, it was something that he was passionate about. He wanted part of the film to be shot up close in the cockpit of the aircraft.He had the actors trained to fly a plane and then he mounted a camera on the plane for the close up shots.
He only needed to have one of his stars trained. Along with Wellman, Richard Arlen also fought in World War I and was also an aviation pilot. So, when you watch and think that the effects of them flying look very realistic for the time period it was made, that is because it is realistic. When they are up there flying around and acting in front of the camera they really are!
As visually stunning as the film is there are some who did not care for the film that much. One of them was star Clara Bow. She says "Wings is... a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie". She believed this because the film was rewritten so Paramount could put her in the film, because she was the number one box office draw with Paramount at the time. Despite some of the negative reviews the movie ran for an astonishing 63 weeks before it was moved to second run theaters. Seeing that some movies today are beginning to be pulled after the required two week screening contacted by movie theaters (Jem and the Holograms anyone?) and this film lasted a year before it got to a bigger audience. I would have to say that that is an overwhelming success!
But I digress.
Wings was produced by Paramount, Main producer was Lucien Hubbard, and was release August 12, 1927. The film had a 2 Million Dollar budget, and that was money in 1927 equivalent to about 26 Million Dollars today. It is one of two silents films to win the Best Picture Award (the other surprisingly is The Artist which was released in 2011). The film also won Best Effects, Engineering Effects at the Academy Awards that same year. The Effects were done by Roy Pomeroy. The film was thought to be lost until 2012 when it was found, restored, and redistributed for a limited time in the movies. In 1997 it was officially put into the National Film Registry for being the first film to win Best Picture.
Wings was in contest for Best Picture agaistn Howard Hughes's The Racket (1928) also with Paramount, and William Fox's Seventh Heaven (1927) from Fox.
The Movie is about two young men, who are in love with the same woman, going off to fight in World War I. The stars of the film are Clara Bow, who plays Mary Preston a young girl infatuated with a Jack Powell. Charles "Buddy" Rogers plays Jack Powell he is the "boy next door turn war hero" of our story. He thinks he is love with a girl named Sylvia, Jobyna Ralston, but in reality he is in love with the idea of her. It takes the whole film for him to realize where his heart really lies. Jack starts off hating another young man from him hometown, reason is because this young man is in love with Sylvia too. This wealthy, and handsome, character is named David Armstrong who is played by Richard Arlen. The plot of this movie is how these two men form a true friendship, despite them loving the same girl, during the struggles and tragedies of the war.
Once you see the film you quickly see why this film won best effects. The Director, William A. Wellman, wanted to make a movie about the war as realistic as possible. This is the film in which all war movies would be compared to. This was the film that changed how action sequences were shot to begin with. A lot of thought and preparation was put into the film. During this time when films were shot in about two months, this film took nine months to shoot. Wellman wanted everything to be as realistic as possible. Since he was an aviation pilot in World War I himself, it was something that he was passionate about. He wanted part of the film to be shot up close in the cockpit of the aircraft.He had the actors trained to fly a plane and then he mounted a camera on the plane for the close up shots.
He only needed to have one of his stars trained. Along with Wellman, Richard Arlen also fought in World War I and was also an aviation pilot. So, when you watch and think that the effects of them flying look very realistic for the time period it was made, that is because it is realistic. When they are up there flying around and acting in front of the camera they really are!
As visually stunning as the film is there are some who did not care for the film that much. One of them was star Clara Bow. She says "Wings is... a man's picture and I'm just the whipped cream on top of the pie". She believed this because the film was rewritten so Paramount could put her in the film, because she was the number one box office draw with Paramount at the time. Despite some of the negative reviews the movie ran for an astonishing 63 weeks before it was moved to second run theaters. Seeing that some movies today are beginning to be pulled after the required two week screening contacted by movie theaters (Jem and the Holograms anyone?) and this film lasted a year before it got to a bigger audience. I would have to say that that is an overwhelming success!
Since I have not seen the other two movies that were nominated that year, I can not whole heatedly say I would agree with The Academy or not. However, watching this film and all the accomplishments it has had and the work put into it I can see why it was nominated. The film to me was visually stunning and slightly scandalous. It was one of the first films to show brief nudity. I was shocked to see this because most of the films that I have seen were under The Motion Picture Production Code, which prohibited nudity. However, with further research I leaned that censorship was trying to be enforced during this time is was wildly ignored. The very strict Motion Picture Production Code would not be really enforced until 1934. It will be interesting to see what Hollywood was "getting away with" in these first few films before that code was enforced.
This movie is not going to be very high on my "must see" list but it do believe it will be on of my most memorable for the visual effect and the innovation of war films.
With all of that being said 1 down 86 to go!
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