Wings

Two small-town rivals who both love the same girl (Clara Bow, the original “It Girl”) enlist as fighter pilots and take to the skies over France in William A. Wellman’s spectacular 1927 silent epic, the first film ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Shot with real planes, real pilots, and cameras bolted to the fuselages, Wings delivers still-breathtaking aerial dogfights and the massive Battle of Saint-Mihiel, all directed by a man who had actually flown combat in World War I. Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen do much of their own flying while Wellman turns a $2 million Paramount production into the ultimate aviation spectacle of the silent era — a landmark of technical daring and emotional punch that invented the modern war-in-the-air movie.