This 1927 Best Picture winner is not-so-secretly a gay love story between two fighter pilots
Wings.There are many things Wings (a Paramount picture directed by William A. Wellman) is best remembered for, particularly among cinephiles and film history connoisseurs: the daring and technically advanced aerial stunts, the special effects, the camera work that still looks incredibly modern today.
And, most importantly, it is strongly cemented in cinematic history as the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.However, there is a much more subtle and curious angle to the movie.
Sure, it’s a film about war, and the way it is sold to the young men of a country as a brave and selfless act of idealism and patriotism.
It’s about how that shine slowly dissipates as the harsh reality settles—how youth is lost in the trenches, and how their families, marriages, and lives are put on hold.But it is, perhaps above everything, about the unbreakable bond between two men.
