Rent Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
3.7 of 5 from 129 ratings
1h 56min
- General info
- Available formats
- Synopsis:
- A two-fisted adventure tale set in South America, feature stars Cary Grant as the tough-talking head of an air-freight service operating in the dangerous Andes Mountains. Jean Arthur co-stars as a vacationing showgirl competing with Rita Hayworth for Grant's affections. A potent combination of humor, romance and action...
- Actors:
- Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman, Victor Kilian, John Carroll, Don 'Red' Barry, Noah Beery Jr., Manuel Álvarez Maciste, Milisa Sierra, Lucio Villegas, Pat Flaherty, Pedro Regas, Pat West, Enrique Acosta, Harry A. Bailey, Wilson Benge
- Directors:
- Howard Hawks
- Producers:
- Howard Hawks
- Writers:
- Jules Furthman, Howard Hawks, Eleanore Griffin, William Rankin
- Others:
- Roy Davidson, Edwin C. Hahn
- Studio:
- Columbia Tristar
- Genres:
- Classics, Drama, Romance
- Collections:
- Acting Up: Top 10 Performances At Cannes, The Instant Expert's Guide, The Instant Expert's Guide to Howard Hawks, Top 10 Films About Planes and Pilots, Top 10 Films By Year, Top 10 Films of 1939, Top Films
- BBFC:
- Release Date:
- 18/04/2016
- Run Time:
- 121 minutes
- Languages:
- English LPCM Mono
- Subtitles:
- English Hard of Hearing
- Formats:
- Pal
- Aspect Ratio:
- Full Screen 1.37:1
- Colour:
- B & W
- BLU-RAY Regions:
- B
- Bonus:
- Audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between filmmakers Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich
- New interview with film critic David Thomson
- Howard Hawks and His Aviation Movies, a new program featuring film scholars Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
- Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1939, starring Car/ Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, Richard Barthelmess, and Thomas Mitchell, and hosted by filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille
- Trailer
- An essay by critic Michael Sragow
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Reviews (2) of Only Angels Have Wings
Gripping drama with twists - Only Angels Have Wings review by CP Customer
Typically suspenseful movie of the period, with chair gripping aerial sequences and plot twists aplenty.
Concludes happily (despite sad losses) on a humorous note.
First-rate acting.
2 out of 2 members found this review helpful.
Action Adventure. - Only Angels Have Wings review by Steve
This looks back to Howard Hawks' pre-code film, The Dawn Patrol, which was about WWI flyers and their response to the seeming inevitability of death. Their survival under pressure forms a bond and an unshakeable code. And it also looks forward to Casablanca whose romance is very similar.
These men deliver the mail in the fog over the Andes. But they will transit anything, including nitroglycerine! Cary Grant is the boss who hires a flyer now married to the only woman he ever cared about... And the new man is reckoned to have once bailed out of a crash which killed his co-pilot... thus breaking the code.
This is Cary Grant's first really successful dramatic role. And it is Rita Hayworth's breakout from support parts in B films. Both are excellent. Two out of three ain't bad; Jean Arthur is badly cast as the showgirl interloper who stumbles on this exotic other world.
There's shadows and fog, and life threatening heroics with plenty of action and a lot of fast, tough crosstalk. There's a gallery of mavericks who turn up on a mountain in South America determined to get the mail out, no matter what. These are the thematic threads that Hawks would weave over his career, creating a kind of genre of his own.
0 out of 0 members found this review helpful.