Wings The First Best Picture Oscar

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 Wings (1927 US) Silent film following a pilot through WWI. This was just filled with firsts namely the first Oscar for Best Picture. Its pretty neat to watch and see how the movie industry is starting to evolve. This film was pretty expensive for a silent which tended to run like what we refer to as shorts. The general thought was, if we make better silent films audiences will forget about those pesky talkies. They were sooo wrong. But, and that's a big But, its still a stunning piece of history and art. By todays standards its MEH, though. I admit I'm a film purist and just love watching the evolution of film. I just love how pre-code this was. it had a lot going on including nudity and a man and a woman in a bed together. Scandalous. It had several same sex moments including a kiss. Some are saying its the first gay kiss on film and others are saying, "nah man that's just how they rolled back then." It seemed pretty gay kiss to me. Which is not to say its the first because others had done it before, with the same dilemma. Was it gay? So the consensus is a solid we don't know. I loved the aerial footage in this which had a lot of US Air Force planes and pilots involved in the shooting of the scenes. I think the USAF was called something different back then though. I just loved the tracking shots that they hadn't quite mastered yet as the camera operator was struggling to focus. I loved the animation that was hand drawn back then. Each frame painstakingly drawn. One of the main characters got ahold of something in Paris and was tripping balls seeing bubbles everywhere. This film was expensive as tuck and Paramount was none too happy about that as it kept going over budget. Audiences loved it though and it made its money back and then some. Producer Adolph Zukor breathed a sigh of relief as his studio "Paramount" was struggling to keep things going in the middle of such change. The brand new Academy kind of bent over backwards to give an award for this film even though it was older than they would have wanted they found a loophole. Actress Clara Bow accepted the award for Zukor who was off doing Producer stuff like producers do. It just wasn't a big deal back then. I love the parallels between this and Top Gun: Maverick this year. Tubi has it free. The print is pretty good considering its advanced age but fair warning much of the color degraded and most of the film is brown instead of B&W. Tubi has a horrible soundtrack to it so just turn it off and play Pink Floyd or something more appropriate. 

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