An avid aviator himself, ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS arguably is Howard Hawks’ most accomplished one among his aviation films, with probably THE DAWN PATROL (1930) flapping closely in the second place. The movie stars Cary Grant as Geoff Carter, a pilot and commandant of a small airmail company in the fictional South American port town of Barranca, and Jean Arthur as Bonnie Lee, an offshore entertainer who happens to pass by en route stateside and takes a shine to Geoff, in spite of the precarious nature of his vocation.

Grant has scarcely stepped into the shoes of a macho type like Geoff, who has an almost fatalistic obsession with his job, which is ill-equipped with low-end aircrafts and frequently engulfed by an unsafe environment for flying, mortality runs high among the high-flying pilots, an opening gambit shows how Bonnie viscerally experiences an emotional rollercoaster from leery, chipper to utterly distressing in a succinct 20 minutes, and is she cut out for a woman on terra firma who is able to perennially wait and pray for the safety return of her derring-do-obsessed man on a daily basis? Surely Bonnie tosses and turns around this rub, yet she barely can get an affirmation from Geoff, who has been once bitten and twice shy, purports that he will never ask any woman to fit in that particular role, so the connotation is clear: it is totally at the peril of any gal who accepts the task on her own volition, and only a male creature built like Cary Grant has that enormity of allure and persuasion for that whopper of female subjugation.

Tellingly, this machismo gender policy aside (a 21-year old Rita Hayworth is unceremoniously manhandled and it is a misfired gunshot from a woman which is deployed as a facile plot device, etc.), ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS asserts itself cogently as a sophisticated drama about collegial regulation, unsentimental confraternity, hard-nosed redemption (boasting strong, rip-snorting performances from supporting players like a stony-faced Barthelmess and a pleasurable Mitchell)and the judicious divergence between taking necessary risks and submitting to a crazed occupation, not to mention, the film’s vintage matte backgrounds and dioramic handicrafts are top-notch stuffs of its time, no wonder its special effects is nominated for an Oscar in company with Joseph Walker’s shipshape B&W cinematography, and that’s fairly enough to pique interest in cinephiles for all comers.

referential entries: Hawks’ I WAS A MALE WAR BRIDE (1949, 5.8/10); BRINGING UP BABY (1938, 7.4/10).