Tea at Trianon: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, November 29, 2024

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

From Anthony Esolen:

Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) is the manager of a small, well, fly-by-night air mail service in South America, and he’s trying his hardest, and pushing his fellow pilots to the limit, to secure a government contract which will set the company up for sure success. The thing is, the route he and they have mostly to use takes them through a pass in the Andes, and the weather in that part of the world during the rainy season can be quite variable, what with two oceans nearby, one rather warm (the Atlantic) and one quite cold (the Pacific), not to mention the effects of the tropical latitudes and the great height of the peaks. You may have read Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s novel Night Flight (1931): it is set in Argentina, and it too involves the sacrifice of the men who fly the postal delivery planes to the greatness of their cause. We get some of that idealism also in Only Angels Have Wings, but the heart of the movie is love: for Geoff, against his inclinations, falls in love with a singer who has just recently arrived at their port town, and she, Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur), against her inclinations, falls in love with him. I suppose that women are attracted to men who do dangerous but necessary things, though they often wish they could lay down those jobs and do something else instead.

The complications in Only Angels Have Wings are both personal and logistical. This work in bad weather will require you to set safety aside and put your life on the line, yet the men do it — and one of them, Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess), has gotten a bad reputation back in America for having bailed out of a plane to leave his mechanic to die. That mechanic was the brother of “Kid” Dabb, Geoff’s elder friend and fellow pilot, played by the many-talented character actor Thomas Mitchell, whose work we’ve often featured at Word and Song: for instance, in another film with a problematic air flight in it, Lost Horizon. Bat has that tag of the coward to live down, or to triumph over. The trial period for the government contract is nearing its end, and all looks well, when the storms come, and Geoff must decide what to do. And let us say that what to do means also what to do with Bonnie, and she must also decide; because if she stays with him, if she marries him, gone are the happy-go-lucky days on ships, singing before rich and pleasant crowds. (Read more.)