1928: Wings and Sunrise 

: Wings :

This was my first silent film and I’m trying to keep this blog real to my level of understanding about movies so you’ll excuse me if my observations about it are not super-sophisticated: talkies were a big step up in the entertainment world. 

With that said, this movie did have some amazing cinematography.

Wings is the story of two WW I fly boys from the same town in love with the same girl who join up to fight the good fight and realize their dream of being airborne. Interestingly, the headliner is Clara Bow, the original “It” girl and here I thought that was just a phrase, I didn’t know there was a real “It” girl. Her career petered out with the advent of talkies but she was the ultimate flapper of the silent film era. Also on the plus side I’m (almost) positive that I spotted two cross-dressing lesbians in a Paris nightclub scene. Don’t see that every day! 

The aerial combat scenes were really amazing. The director was a pilot veteran and did a fantastic job with the dog fights. Watching them you find yourself thinking, “How on earth did they manage this???”

I do plan to research the films I write about but not to parrot other people’s opinions, just to get the backdrop info I need to inform my own natural thinking about the pics. I hope to say something interesting about each film that reveals as much about how I think as it does about the film. After all, any of you can read the movie summaries in Rotten Tomatoes. That’s not why you’re reading this. Hopefully you’re reading this because you like the way I write and what I have to say.

My final evaluation criteria of each film will be based on whether I would watch it again. I’m a person that derives great satisfaction from re-reading favorite books and re-watching favorite TV shows and movies. So that will be my yardstick. Would I re-watch this? Would I buy a copy? Would I read the book behind it, if there is one? How much did I enjoy exploring the storyline?

I would not re-watch Wings. The love triangle (which does not involve Clara Bow) is not compelling. The patriotism feels rote for much of the film although the last 20 minutes are somewhat redeeming. The dog fights, while interesting to watch once, wouldn’t bring me back.

As I said earlier I’ll also be comparing the winners to the movies that filmcritic.org posits as the shoulda coulda wouldas from those years. But I do have limits. Netflix is my source and especially in the early years many of the one-off films are not carried by Netflix so they won’t be included here.

For this first year there were essentially two outstanding picture award winners. The second, “Sunrise,” got official recognition as the “artistic” winner and of course that wasn’t good enough for the bruisers at filmcritic.org who thought it should have been the only winner.

: Sunrise :

My friend Betsie, who has taken a peripheral interest in this project, came over this afternoon to watch Sunrise with me. 

Neither of us found the film very good. The story was predictable and staid. There was some good dramatic tension but not enough to overcome the lack of originality of the plot.

To be perfectly honest, neither of these films were actually very enjoyable to watch and that’s a somewhat disappointing way to begin a film festival!