Hell's Angels

Rating:
Summary: Hell's Angels in Bi-Planes
Review: Hell's Angels is an amazing film. It is certainly the best WWI aviation film, although Wings runs it close, and it has flying sequences that are simply staggering, because they are so obviously real. There is a wonderful sequence depicting the attack on an enormous Zeppelin which shows how the giant airship actually operated and gives a sense of its size, slowness and vulnerability. Also worthy of note is a mass dogfight involving a captured German bomber, Baron Von Richthofen's Flying Circus and what seems like most of the Royal Flying Corps. At times the sky is filled with bi-planes performing thrilling manoeuvres, but the film does not fail to show the individuals in this fight and to point out the horrific human cost of the fighting. Hell's Angels is in fact surprisingly violent, showing men consumed in flames and screaming to their deaths. Actually it is remarkably frank in a number of ways. Jean Harlow gives a star-making performance which oozes sex. She never looked better especially when uttering her famous line 'Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?' Here is a woman who knows what she wants and doesn't allow conventions to get in her way. What's more the film doesn't attempt to tone-down this characterization. She frankly admits she wants nothing to do with marriage and family values and it is this frankness which must have seemed so shocking to contemporary audiences. Hell's Angels is also not afraid to show flyers full of fear and questioning the point of the war. It's most sympathetic character is a coward who just wants to live. The story is thus rather unusual, especially for a war film, for it does not contain the heroics and the heroes so familiar from the genre, but rather shows the grim determination of scared men to get the job done.

It is possible to find a few criticisms of this film. The two leading men are only adequate as actors and lack the charisma of more familiar thirties leading men. Furthermore they are not particularly convincing as Englishmen for they make little attempt to disguise their American accents. Also the German characters are a little too stereotypical and at times slightly ludicrous, especially in one scene where they show their Teutonic willingness to die for the Fatherland by jumping from a Zeppelin.

The print used for this MCA Universal video is first class. It has been restored so that it includes some tinted night and early morning scenes and includes a wonderful early Technicolor party scene. The sound is better than is often the case with early talkies; there is very little background noise, although there are some snatches of dialogue which are a little indistinct. This is a high quality video and essential viewing for fans of WWI aviation films.

Rating:
Summary: Better Than Anticipated
Review: It has been my experience that early talkies (1928-1931), with exceptions, tended to be slow and laborious in pacing. By 1932, they greatly improved in timing. With this in mind, I expected Hell's Angels (released in 1930) to be very trying, but it turned out to be a superb film about men in war. The drama between the men (Ben Lyon and James Hall) and Jean Harlow was rather lame, but the rest of the film showed a sophistication rare to 1930 films. I highly recommend this film.

Rating:
Summary: HISTORICALLY SIGNIFICANT
Review: The famous film which was produced and directed by Howard Hughes and introduced a sensational new platinum blonde siren by the name of Jean Harlow. The simple plot has two brothers leave their studies at Oxford to join the British Royal Flying Corps at the outbreak of WWI. In its day, the film garned fantastic reviews for the aerial sequences which are first rate. The air shots were considered awesome, thrilling and immensely impressive to the audiences of 1930. The acting was merely sufficient; even in pantomime, it would be hard to accept Jean Harlow as an English girl or Lyon & Hall as Oxford students. It would take Harlow more acting experience in the movies before her comedic gifts would be realised and appreciated by the public and critics alike. Critics had field day exposing the inept "acting" of Harlow in her early pictures; however beginning with RED HEADED WOMAN (1932) the critics and public alike were beginning to sit up and stare with utter amazement and delight at her metamorphasis as an actress. In the priorly named picture, the titian haired (it was dyed for her role) Harlow knocked the critics socks off with her uninhibited playing and in her next picture she would be teamed with none other than Gable. RED DUST was a sensational blockbuster in 1932.