Directed by William Wellman (1896 –1975), an aviation veteran of the W.W. I, Wings was the only silent film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture (in truth, the category was titled “Most Outstanding Production”):
“It is the story of two extremely youthful officers in the American air service during the war. We can see them going through the training mill in Texas, dueling with a German ‘circus’ above the clouds, raking communication roads with machine-gun fire and finally facing each other in a terrific life-and-death struggle in the air….The two heroes are played, and played remarkably well, by Charles (Buddy) Rogers and Richard Arlen…Clara Bow, who appears as the saccharine heroine, is, I regret to say, not so good.”
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