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Sun Sep 16, 2012 10:57 pm
[b]BFI Southbank
BFI London Film Festival
6pm, 10 October 2012
The first Oscar-winning film, a sweeping adventure story of doomed flyers in WW1, with never-bettered aerial sequences, directed by a young William Wellman.
Director William A Wellman
Producer Lucien Hubbard
Screenwriter Hope Loring, Louis D Lighton
With Clara Bow, Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Richard Arlen
USA 1927
144 mins
Paramount’s epic flying movie was the first-ever winner of the academy award for Best Picture. Now faithfully restored to mark the studio’s centenary, it remains one of cinema’s best depictions of primitive aerial combat. Director William A Wellman – a Flying Corps survivor – and cameraman Harry Perry set the standard for all subsequent aviation pictures, discovering, for instance, that you needed clouds to achieve scale and perspective in the air. The story plods a little: Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen are Air Service pals in love with the same girl (Jobyna Ralston) until Red Cross nurse Clara Bow turns up. Pilots die (famously, Gary Cooper, after a magnetic four-minute cameo), and there are maudlin moments, but Wellman’s flair and fluidity (‘sailing’ his cameras, for example, over café table-tops) win the day. ‘Death and destruction have seldom been more lyrically portrayed,’ said Kevin Brownlow, and it would be hard to disagree. (Notes: Clyde Jeavons)
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/d ... B71D2BA9C0
BFI London Film Festival
6pm, 10 October 2012
The first Oscar-winning film, a sweeping adventure story of doomed flyers in WW1, with never-bettered aerial sequences, directed by a young William Wellman.
Director William A Wellman
Producer Lucien Hubbard
Screenwriter Hope Loring, Louis D Lighton
With Clara Bow, Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Richard Arlen
USA 1927
144 mins
Paramount’s epic flying movie was the first-ever winner of the academy award for Best Picture. Now faithfully restored to mark the studio’s centenary, it remains one of cinema’s best depictions of primitive aerial combat. Director William A Wellman – a Flying Corps survivor – and cameraman Harry Perry set the standard for all subsequent aviation pictures, discovering, for instance, that you needed clouds to achieve scale and perspective in the air. The story plods a little: Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen are Air Service pals in love with the same girl (Jobyna Ralston) until Red Cross nurse Clara Bow turns up. Pilots die (famously, Gary Cooper, after a magnetic four-minute cameo), and there are maudlin moments, but Wellman’s flair and fluidity (‘sailing’ his cameras, for example, over café table-tops) win the day. ‘Death and destruction have seldom been more lyrically portrayed,’ said Kevin Brownlow, and it would be hard to disagree. (Notes: Clyde Jeavons)
https://whatson.bfi.org.uk/lff/Online/d ... B71D2BA9C0