Kat's Film Reviews: Only Angels Have Wings

Monday, November 03, 2003

Only Angels Have Wings

This is one of those sweet older films that has some fantastic lines, but then also has dreadful lines that make you crinkle your nose at the screen. The scenes between Jean Arthur and Cary Grant sparkle, for the most part, because of the understated sexual innuendo that you don't hear in films nowadays (i.e., flirting the clever way). But then there are breast-heaving scenes between Rita Hayworth and anyone within spitting distance, and that's simply embarrassing. The film is set in some fantastical South American country with dripping palm fronds and ice-covered mountains. And tiny planes (hence the wings in the title) to carry the mail to and from the palm fronds through narrow fissures in the ice-covered mountains. There is a piece in the middle where things get wonderfully complex and you feel the film might completely redeem itself, but then you are subjected to an ending that shows what the Hollywood powers-that-be assumed was how a man should react to a woman asking him whether he loves her. Sigh. The film's worth it to watch Jean Arthur's glorious performance (and Cary Grant's to a lesser degree) and to think, albeit very briefly, on the strange mix of morality depicted by everyone involved.

year: 1939
length: 121 min.
rating: 2.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031762/combined

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