ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS

Cary Grant and Jean Arthur star in one of the greatest adventure movies ever made. Only Angels Have Wings is director Howard Hawks’ “quintessential statement on professional camaraderie as applied to men striving to perform the impossible for purely gratuitous reasons. Grant leads a band of American flyers in a Central American banana republic trying to maintain an airmail service against the hazards of the surrounding mountains and the enveloping fog and rain. Arthur as a tough, wisecracking showgirl presages the latter-day Hawks heroine in her successful assimilation into the band’s honor code. The style is deceptively smooth in concealing the razor-sharp timing, the complex groupings, and the constant refining of themes of responsibility and expiation.” – Andrew Sarris. 

Impeccably well-made, this marvelous yarn is one of the landmarks of American cinema. With Rita Hayworth, Richard Barthelmess and Thomas Mitchell. (1939. 121 min.)