BYU

Harold B. Lee Library

Only Angels Have Wings

Cary Grant, Jean Aurthur, Thomas Mitchell, Richard Barthlemess, Rita Hayworth
Commentary: James D’Arc (Special Collections)

  • Time: 7:00 PM
  • Date: Friday, January 27, 2006
  • Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.


About the Event

Howard Hawks was one of the great five directors of all time according to the British journal Sight and Sound. Only Angels Have Wings, about the dangers of running an airline operation in South America, shows why. Hawks’s frequent theme of professionalism under pressure and the wonderfully maddening effects of romance added to the mix make its treatment of male-female relationships come across as sophisticated and true in 2005 as in 1939. Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy concludes that with Only Angels Have Wings the director was “simultaneously operating at maximum effectiveness as an entertainer and a commercial filmmaker on the one hand and a philosopher and intuitive artist-poet on the other” and that it is “one of the most exhilarating films of what has often been called the best year in American film history.” Special Collections is the home of the Howard Hawks Papers. Columbia Pictures. 1939. 121 mins. Director: Howard Hawks.

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