Hell's Angels (1930)
directed by Howard Hughes, dialog directed by James Whale©1930 Caddo Company, Renewed 1958 Hughes Tool Co.
Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive
Frames in this review are taken from the Universal DVD ©2004 Universal Studios.
Jump to section: The UCLA Restoration
There's no trailer on the Universal DVD for Hell's Angels, but no matter, any trailer would pale in comparison to Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. Some of the most spectacular scenes are excerpted in the Scorsese biopic: the Zeppelin bursting into flame in a lengthy hand-colorized shot, the dizzying climatic dogfight featuring perfectly choreographed aerobatics and a surprisingly believable head-on collision of two planes.
Note the emphasis on the aviation scenes, as there's very little innovation to be found in the story. It's quite melodramatic, and a list of the characters almost tells the story: the unflappable Oxford collegian and his cowardly brother, their German pal, the blonde bombshell who is (gasp) shockingly unfaithful, the cold-blooded Zeppelin captain, even the Red Baron von Richthofen himself. Well, the German finds himself on the other side from his friends, the Zeppelin captain does something suitably callous while bombing London, the brothers find themselves in a love triangle, and there's a dogfight to end all dogfights. Chop up the plot, pour it in the character stew, stir, and the result is the World War I analog of Pearl Harbor.
They have more in common than the trite plot. Both were extremely expensive, so much so that (hundreds of) millions at the box office brought them near break-even (though which side of the break-even point is known only to the accountants). On August 16, 1930, Mordaunt Hall wrote in the Times: "Thrilling flashes of airplane fighting in the clouds and magnificent scenes of ... bombing ... counteract silly episodes ..." (p. 13) Three-quarters of a century later, A. O. Scott wrote a capsule summary of his original review on NYTimes.com: "And, it should be said, the aerial combat sequences are vivid and impressive. But rarely has a movie so technically proficient been so conceptually bankrupt." Both included a substantial amount of real aerial footage combined with various special effects techniques, both juggled a vast array of film technologies for effect — Hell's Angels has a reel in two-strip Technicolor, while Pearl Harbor had a few dozen prints struck on Technicolor's briefly-revived dye-transfer line.
But don't let the comparison to Pearl Harbor scare you away, because Hell's Angels is the better movie. So what if an Oxford residential college ends up with the wild antics of an American fraternity house, or that the faint British accent of the German character Karl was stronger than the three supposedly British main characters combined? This is a blockbuster of the old style, complete with a ten-minute intermission and exit music to add to the roadshow effect. Hell's Angels manages to keep the viewer entertained and attentive, and if it moves slowly at times the aerial scenes more than make up for it. The characters speak some silly and obvious lines, but occasionally there's something that matters, like the coward brother Monte Rutledge's (Ben Lyon) rant against the bigshots who pull the strings in the brutal machinery of war.
Ultimately the film ends with a successful Allied attack made possible by the heroes' bombing mission. There are also appeals to loyalty and duty, both in camp as Monte expresses his doubts to his brother Roy (James Hall), and when they are taken prisoner and questioned about the upcoming offensive. But the doubts reflect the profound disillusionment of the 1920s about the Great War. Hell's Angels was released in the same year as Lewis Milestones's anti-war film classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, and a few years later would see the publication of the accusatory book Merchants of Death.
The acting is a mixed bag. James Hall and Ben Lyon both put out a gee-willickers performance that's the deliberate public image of the Hollywood dream factory, and ham it up to tears at the death scene. John Darrow presents an intentionally weak Karl; how did such a crybaby gets into Oxford? (In a fourteen year-old's tone: "But suppose England comes in? Why Roy, that'd be horrible! I never could do that; why, I love England!") Lucien Prival plays the Prussian general role with almost as much glee as Erich von Stroheim, though this Prussian isn't that evil (except as inspiration for Dr. Evil in Austin Powers). Jean Harlow succeeds in what little characterization she has to play with by being straightforwardly and appropriately naughty, though occasionally her voice begins to resemble the parody of silent film actors in Singin' in the Rain. In the last days before the Production Code began to be enforced, Harlow's lines are laced with double-entendres that have just the barest veneer of respectability, and the costume designer puts her in breathtaking gowns that under the right lighting are skin-colored in both black-and-white and Technicolor.
A better film could've resulted if more care were put into the dialog — many of the elements of a good film are there, and the melodramatic story is not without its charms. But this is the early sound era, and Hell's Angels is hardly alone in talking for the sake of talking. The best parts of the film were filmed without synchronized sound. The Zeppelin bombing scene is dubbed in German but is essentially silent with intertitles, and here and there other intertitles remain. The speeded-up movement and the sparse wording create an entirely different aesthetic, more sweeping and less trivial, with room for the viewer to layer on his own feelings, and the same applies to the English scenes that were shot silent and then overdubbed. There's more camera movement, more motion within the frame, more dynamic angles. One wonders if enough film survives to piece together the silent version of Hell's Angels — the spectacular aerial scenes and the doubts about the war would easily make it superior to the first Academy Award winner Wings — though the chances of that getting released are about as great as getting the English version of The Young Girls of Rochefort.
And those flying scenes are truly worth every penny. When the two fleets engage for the dogfight, the sheer precision of the aerobatics, with planes zipping every which ways within mere yards of other planes, is dazzling. Just think of how many falling leaves the fliers had to do just for the scenes showing a plane out of control! The camera planes came very close and stayed rather steady — there's a feeling of fluidity and realism to the shots of the giant V as the planes bob around while the pilots make subtle adjustments to stay in formation. Real life always looks so much better than process or model shots; the aerial gunnery in the dogfight sequence feels immediate and fresh, as though we really were over the gunner's shoulder as enemy fighters headed in our direction. And Howard Hughes was right about the clouds — they do make the scenes more intense by adding a greater sense of motion.
In contrast, the earlier Zeppelin scene is stately with its model shots and fluffy white clouds of dry ice. With the engine telegraph and the propeller, it's almost like a U-Boat. And when it explodes, pow! Flames are a good choice for hand-colorization as they hide any imperfections, and sudden burst of red in a blue-tinted night scene makes for a great effect. When the flames fill the frame and the metallic structure falls apart, the whole picture is tinted red, and could almost pass for the real thing over Lakehurst, New Jersey when the Hindenburg caught on fire seven years later.
There's more tinting throughout: night scenes are tinted blue, and a wordless duel at the crack of dawn is a lovely lavender. The two-strip Technicolor feels underused; the art direction generally leaves a predominance of one color with the other used sparingly — e.g. a red-draped dance hall with military uniforms, or rosy faces and Helen's gown amid a background of trees. It's not as spectacular as the Turner/Thames Silents videotape of Ben-Hur, which actually had white and black as well as red and green. Here, there's red and green, and both are low-saturation. Someday I must really see a 35mm print of Ben-Hur to see how much, if any, electronic color rebalancing was done after the transfer. But here, the Technicolor blends in better, as though it were just like the Zeppelin scene — tinted with some stencil colorization by hand.
The film undoubtedly tries to be accurate about aviation, given Howard Hughes' interest in the field, but there are some pretty obvious military and continuity goofs elsewhere. Karl is called up to the 18th Army Corps, which is fine since it's a Reserve corps, but he turns up in a Zeppelin with a big L32 on the side, marking it as a Navy airship! And it's rather puzzling how blowing up a munitions dump behind the front lines on the day of an offensive leads to victory, where line upon line of densely packed soldiers manage to lose only a dozen men while attacking German trenches. Machine guns and ordinary rifle fire from frontline ammunition stocks should have easily mown down the attackers; this is the First World War, not the Seven Years' War. On a less technical note, Monte sets out to write a pre-combat letter to Helen at a bar, is told "Pen and ink on the table," and sits down to pick up a pencil. Likely these are the result of Howard Hughes' fixation on the flying scenes — the dialog scenes were directed separately by James Whale and they feel a whole lot different.
All in all, Hell's Angels was rather enjoyable as the type of spectacle that was extraordinarily expensive then and would be prohibitively costly today. Were it not for the flying, the film could've been shot in a couple of weeks for far less money. It's far superior to most early-sound films, and with some allowance for the melodramatic story, is quite watchable today.
The UCLA Restoration
The cool thing about any UCLA restoration of a studio film is that you can look it up in the Film and Television Archive's catalog. The information is terse and suitable only for those with sufficient technical knowledge about film, but it's better than nothing, which is what's available for most films released on DVD. And it does provide peeks into the 1989 restoration of Hell's Angels. This one was fortunately straightforward, as three sources managed to put together the complete original release. The base print came from Howard Hughes' estate through Universal, some sound and picture came from George Eastman House, the Technicolor reel 4 is duplicated from UCLA's own print of a shorter cut.
As a result, the picture quality is very good. The avoidance of process photography except for a brief interlude in the Zeppelin sequence mostly limits the grain to the dissolves. The film is remarkably well-preserved; two-color Technicolor is fragile and usually filled with splices, but not here. Much of the material looks pristine, perhaps it was wet-gated; but the rest has some minor scratches and both positive and negative dust. A few non-optical scenes look a touch soft, and the presence of male leads make this seem unintentional — perhaps these indicate a section printed in from the Eastman House print. Of course, two-color Technicolor is expected to be soft and grainy. The audio is also quite good, very little noise and distortion. The restoration has basically resulted in the complete film at almost the same quality as a well-preserved studio film.
