Stars: Ben Lyon, James Hall, Jean Harlow, John Darrow
Director: Howard Hughes & James Whale
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars (5/5 for the action sequences though)
Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol." This month, our focus is on Jean Harlow-click here to learn more about Ms. Harlow (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.
While we are on a completely different theme than last year with our first official installment of "Saturday of the Stars" for 2020, I do like the strange bookend aspects of going from South Pacific to Hell's Angels as we bridge the seasons. Both films wear the badge of "classic" while also not being a film you'd instantly name-check as a "classic," and both are about war, though as this film is lensed in 1930, you might have guessed we're taking a peak at World War I. We're also taking our first peak at Jean Harlow, and really the nation's first look at the actress. While Jean Harlow had been working in movies for a years when Hell's Angels came around (getting bit parts in movies starring Clara Bow and Laurel & Hardy), she wasn't getting the sorts of roles that would translate into bigger work onscreen. She lucked out, though, when The Jazz Singer required Howard Hughes to re-lense much of Hell's Angels, and his then-leading woman (Greta Nissen), had too thick of a Norwegian accent to be able to plausibly play the role that would eventually go to Harlow. Hell's Angels ended up being a landmark, the highest-grossing film of the year (though thanks to Hughes' famously casual attitude toward spending, it sill lost money), and got Harlow a leading role in a major motion picture...though consistent work in movies was still a year or two away.
(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is centered on a pair of brothers, Monte (Lyon) and Roy (Hall). Roy is the upstanding brother & Monte the scalawag, frequently finding himself in the arms of another woman, to the point where early in the film Roy is shot impersonating Monte in a duel after Monte sleeps with another man's wife (and then runs away rather than facing him in said duel). Roy is madly in love with Helen (Harlow), a beautiful young woman whom he views as chaste & his ideal mate. We learn soon, however, that two things are about to change the brothers lives. The first is that World War I is going to break out, thus ending their friendship with a German student named Karl (Darrow, in an under-explored role in the picture), and the second is that Helen is no angel. At a dance, she makes a pass at Monte, and Monte, though initially reluctant, indulges and sleeps with his brother's girlfriend. He doesn't figure this out, however, until much later in the film, and the focus becomes for most of the next hour on planes, as is Hughes' wont, as we see epic battle after epic battle in the sky. We get brief interludes on the ground, one of which involves Helen with another man, drunk & promiscuous, shattering Roy's illusions about her. A final one is when the brothers are captured by Germans, and Monte decides to betray British intelligence by telling of an upcoming attack rather than be killed. Roy tricks him, and when he cannot convince him that he must do what is best for country first, he shoots him in the back and Monte dies, with Roy certain to be killed as a result. The film ends with the British attack a success, thanks to the two brothers' deaths.
Hell's Angels, if it's remembered today, is remembered both for Harlow's breakthrough (neither of the two leading men would approach her fame in later years) and for the staggering aerial shots in the movie. The effects in this film are kind of impossible to believe. While Hughes didn't actually take down a full-sized zeppelin for the fight between the brothers and Karl midway through the picture, he still created a 60' replica of one and used it on a lot in Arcadia for the scenes, eventually literally burning the expensive model in one glorious take to simulate the kamikaze-style destruction of the blimp when a British soldier crashes into it when he runs out of bullets. Combined with the final action sequence, where Hughes blows up what looks to be several farms and has aerial tricks that would make the Blue Angels nervous, Hell's Angels earns its spot in film history as the first great action movie of the Sound Era; that its sole Oscar nomination is for Cinematography makes sense considering the risks & techniques involved to make this, and I'm kind of baffled how it lost. It also earns a place in infamy as one of the most violent offscreen movies ever made. Four people died during the filming of the picture, including three pilots, and Hughes was seriously injured when he attempted a trick that all of the pilots refused to do since it seemed certain to end in death (it didn't-Hughes got the shot, but he also crashed and got a fractured skull to go with it).
Harlow is really only in three extended sequences of the movie despite her high-billing (though she's got a substantial supporting part). She's fun-Hell's Angels doesn't care much for dialogue (though Helen gets the immortal line "Would you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?" in all of its racy pre-Code glory), but this film is celebrated for its action sequences, not its acting. Still, there's something glorious about seeing Harlow in this movie. Hughes paid to have the dance/seduction scene in Technicolor, making this the only movie Harlow would ever do in color (it's honestly the only time I've ever actually seen even a picture of her that's not in black-and-white), and it's jarring. Frequently when you think of old-time actors, they age more in your head, but Jean Harlow was only 18 when this movie was made, and the youth in her skin and eyes is jaw-dropping in the sequence. She's the best part of the acting in the movie (the brothers are playing one-dimensional versions of themselves), but she doesn't get the sparkling comedy that she'd be known for later in her career, and so we start out with a movie where she's largely upstaged by the explosions.
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