Product Details

• Format: Black & White, NTSC, HiFi Sound, Dolby
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Paramount
• VHS Release Date: October 22, 1996
• Run Time: 139 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (39 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6300215482
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,181 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Wings, the first movie to win an Academy Award for Best Picture and the only silent film to win, is still remarkably enjoyable to watch. The story is a fairly conventional one--two flyboys, both in love with the same girl, go off to fight World War I, and male bonding and heartbreak ensue. It's a perfectly serviceable plot, except for the key logical flaw that both young men have inexplicably fallen in love with the boring girl down the street and have somehow failed to notice that Clara Bow is the girl next door. Both male leads really flew their airplanes, and the dogfight footage is still spectacular. The main reason to watch Wings, though, is to see the difference between an actor and a movie star. There are many actors in the film, but only two movie stars. Clara Bow is a treat to watch every minute she's on screen, and young Gary Cooper in a tiny role nearly walks away with the movie, mostly by standing there and looking dreamy. It's well worth sitting through a little cheesy organ music for a movie this much fun. --Ali Davis

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not An Official U.S. Release.., March 10, 2008

By 

Bluzfan1 (Illinois in the U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

Wings is a great movie and well deserved of the very first ever Academy Award for Best Picture. The problem is it hasn't been released officially in the U.S., and until such time this Korean import version will have to do. While i'm glad to have this film in my "Best Picture" collection? I should add that the picture is somewhat grainy, flickers & jumps around quite a bit, and there is no way to turn the annoying subtitles off. Subtitles on a silent movie you ask? Yes there are! As with all silent movies, there are dialogue cards that appear on the film between scenes so that you can read what the actors are saying. And this version has subtitles which repeat the dialogue word-for-word, but not at the same time as the dialogue cards, which means you have to read every word twice, the second time after the film resumes. They're quite distracting to the movie, and the main reason i'm rating this three stars.

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American Melodrama at its Best, October 15, 2003

By 

Eric C. Player "Reason Together" (Orange, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Wings (1927), is not only the FIRST winner of the Best Picture Academy Award, it may be the BEST film to hold that title, and I say that knowing that Casablanca, Gladiator, and The Last Emperor all hold the statue too. There have been some stinkers dubbed "Best Picture" in the past, (Shakespeare in Love beating Saving Private Ryan??? The Greatest Show on Earth over High Noon?! Spare us all) but this is not one of them.

Even supporters of the film, writing reviews here at Amazon, can't seem to resist taking shots at Wings' plot, but I'm here to tell you it is just fine, even solidly written. Some reviewers don't sound like they have seen this movie in a long time, or if they have, they slept through it. For one thing, the "Love Triangle" is not as convoluted or hard to grasp as others have implied:

Jack Powell (Buddy Rogers) has a crush on one Sylvia Lewis (Jobyna Ralston), the local beauty queen. She finds this cute and indulges it a little bit--actually too much. But she is quite sincerely in love with someone else, David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) a well-off local boy who isn't quite able to figure out how to tell Jack to butt-out because it doesn't involve money. The wild card in all of this (literally and figuratively) is Mary Preston (Clara Bow), who lives next door to Jack and has been mooning over him since she was a little girl.

That's the whole dynamic. I have no idea what someone was thinking when they suggested Mary expressed any feelings for David (She never does). Some have said they can't believe Jack would go for Sylvia with Mary next door. I see their point, because the casting of Clara Bow in her role is like having Kirsten Dunst living next door and not noticing. The problem is, Jack isn't SUPPOSED to notice Mary until the end, when he has experienced the war and realizes that everything he wants is right there at home where he belongs. In the beginning he is all about Fast Cars and the Trophy Girls.

So, the plot thickens as the US gets dragged into World War I and both Jack and David sign up as pilots. Naturally each of them heads to Sylvia's house to say good-bye. Sylvia prepared a locket with her picture in it for David, but Jack sees it first. This scene is a great display of awkwardness wrapped in etiquette, especially when Sylvia tries to let go of Jack's hand. Jack takes the locket from her, and, this being more than she can stand, Sylvia almost gets the words out to tell him the truth when David gets there. At this point Jack turns on the macho-factor, and he is so gleeful about rubbing Sylvia's locket in David's face that he doesn't even notice she never kissed him good-bye.

Sylvia makes up for David's loss of the locket with some tender words and some passionate kissing--no mystery where her feelings lie--and the three of them head off for war. Three, because Mary goes too, as a nurse. Another complaint about this film and it's plot has been that Clara Bow wasn't given enough to do, shunted off into a side part even though she got billing as the Leading Lady, but I just don't see it. Her part was as big as any Romantic Interest in most movies out there; a good example for comparison would be Kathleen Quinlan's roll in Apollo 13. Most of her scenes were not shared with Tom Hanks, but she turned in an emotional and Oscar-nominated performance nonetheless.

The air battles in this film have never been topped anywhere. Ever. And that includes anything involving aliens, fighter jets, or a galaxy far, far, away. The information that the actors flew their own planes is misleading. Actors couldn't do what these pilots do. The stunt flying is by the US Army Air Corps in Texas (!) where the movie was filmed (I dare you to have guessed that on your own). What Rogers and Arlen do is all their own close-ups, flying the plane as they careen and dive. When the camera ran out of film (or the planes ran out of gas) a stunt pilot from the Army would pop up and land the plane.

The resolution of the story I won't comment further on, except to say that it is extremely moving and does highlight the madness of war, especially the kind of war WW1 was. I support military action for just causes, but everything has a cost and Wings lays that cost bare. These were issues being struggled over long before Vietnam, just in case you thought Hippies invented protest.

OK, two other responses to the "plot mongers" on this review board: (1) After complaining that she didn't do enough, they insist that Mary's tactics in Paris were out of character. No they were not. Mary had to get Jack away from that "other woman" and get him his orders before he got court marshaled. She was not becoming a floozie, only dressing the part, and she paid the ultimate price for the risk she took. It also helped to stir up Jack's feelings about her in later scenes, and get him thinking. (2) Melodramatic? Sure. Unoriginal? Well... if you make that claim because you can guess what's coming or you've seen it all before, just ask yourself how old these movies are that you are comparing Wings to, and check Wings' release date again. Maybe the plot-heist occurred in the other direction.

This film deserves a DVD release. I have been enamored with, and watching, this film since I was 13 (30 now). It shattered my little-boy prejudices against both black and white and silent films in one great blast of anti-aircraft fire, and I have been spreading its gospel ever since. You will not ever see a better World War 1 film.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Romance and Danger in the Skies, January 7, 2007

By 

Bobby Underwood "starlighthotel" (Manly NSW, Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wings (1927) [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This silent film has aged well and soars through the skies for over two hours of action and romantic drama. Ace William "Wild Bill" Wellman helmed this great silent about two young men who can't wait to fly through the skies and the Great War which gives them their chance to live their romantic dreams.

Wellman's filming of combat in the clouds is still as fresh and exciting as it was when it won the first Academy Award for Best Picture. Sometimes lost, however, when historians talk of this film, is the sweet and innocent romance which frames the film.

Clara Bow shines with great energy and charisma as the young sweet Mary Preston. Her "girl next door" portrayel of an American girl longing for the love of Jack Powell (Charles "Buddy" Rogers) is endearing. Another often forgotten element is the performance of Jobyna Ralston as the lovely rich girl, Sylvia, both Jack and David Armstrong (Richard Arlen) are in love with.

Under Wellman's direction, her Sylvia has a tenderness and likability, rather than just the "rich girl standing in the way" she might have been in another film. Bow is lively, cute and sexy, but Ralston's Sylvia has some romantically framed scenes which helps her hold her own.

For the most part, however, Wellman's film is about males and the bonds often formed during wartime. These flyers are not jaded yet, as in Hawks' "Only Angels Have Wings" and it is that romantic innocence which makes this an engrossing and sentimental masterpiece of a bygone era.

Mary will join the Women's Motor Core and cross paths with her true love. David and Jack will become closer than brothers, one making the ultimate sacrifice and allowing his friend to go on with his life free of guilt. It is the story which is the star here, rather than the actors. Gary Cooper does, however, exude star power in his brief time as the veteren flyer welcoming the two new recruits with a sobering reminder of war.

Wellman's famous scenes of open-air planes soaring into battle like graceful wings carrying danger and death are unforgettable. The fact that the two actors actually flew their own planes as this breathtaking footage was shot is astounding. The battles are real and deadly, Wellman showing there was honor in the skies as well as danger.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of director Wellman here is despite the tragedy and danger clearly shown, he still manages to convey the more romantic aspects of war, or at the very least the romantic notions of it. One of the great films of the silent era, "Wings" does not disappoint. An entertaining film which stands on its own, it is also an historical bridge between an innocence which was soon to pass into those cloud filled skies and never return.