Wings

Wings, one of the final big Hollywood productions of the silent era, is most famous for being the Best Picture winner at the inaugural Academy Awards, or rather the winner of what was first called ‘Best Picture, Production’ (F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise picked up ‘Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production’ the same year). A wartime melodrama of an enormous scale, whose DNA can be found in many a film that went on to win the same accolade (e.g. Gone with the Wind) and many that disastrously tried (Pearl Harbor), it contains camerawork and set pieces that still marvel today.

In its tale of two rival pilots turned best friends in World War I, who share love for the same woman back home, director Wellman captures elaborate, death-defying dogfights. It’s Clara Bow, however, as the pining ‘girl next door’ friend of one of them, who proves the perky highlight, making up for the drippy leading men and eventually exhausting final stretches. [Josh Slater-Williams]