August 28, 2012 (XXV:1) William A. Wellman, WINGS (1927, 144 min)

1929 Academy Awards for Best Picture (Wellman) and Best Effects, Engineering Effects (Roy Pomeroy) 1997 Selected for National Film Registry Directed by William A. Wellman Based on a story by John Monk Saunders Screenplay by Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton Produced by B.P. Schulberg (associate producer) and Lucien Hubbard (producer, uncredited) Original Music by J.S. Zamecnik Cinematography by Harry Perry Film Editing by E. Lloyd Sheldon (editor-in-chief) and Lucien Hubbard Art Direction by Hans Dreier Costume Design by Travis Banton and Edith Head Conductor (2012 restored score): Peter Boyer Arranger and orchestrator (2012 restoration): Dominik Hauser F.M. Andrews.... commander: military pilots S.C. Campbell....supervisor: flying sequences Sterling Campbell....technical director: flight sequences James A. Healy.... supervisor: flying sequences A.M. Jones.... supervisor: ground troop maneuvers E.P. Ketchum.... supervisor: trench system reproduction F.P. Lahm.... commander: military pilots Robert Mortimer.... ordnance supervisor Ted Parson.... supervisor: flying sequences Carl von Haartman.... supervisor: flying sequences Clara Bow...Mary Preston Charles 'Buddy' Rogers...Jack Powell Richard Arlen...David Armstrong Jobyna Ralston...Sylvia Lewis El Brendel...Herman Schwimpf Richard Tucker...Air Commander Gary Cooper...Cadet White Gunboat Smith...The Sergeant Henry B. Walthall... David's Father Roscoe Karns...Lt. Cameron Julia Swayne Gordon… David's Mother

Arlette Marchal...Celeste Hedda Hopper...Mrs. Powell Carl von Haartman...German Officer Gloria Wellman...Peasant Child William A. Wellman...Doughboy William A. Wellman (February 29, 1896, Brookline, Massachusetts – December 9, 1975, Los Angeles, California) directed 83 films, some of which are 1958 Lafayette Escadrille, 1958 Darby's Rangers, 1955 Blood Alley, 1954 Track of the Cat, 1954 The High and the Mighty, 1953 Island in the Sky, 1952 My Man and I, 1951 Westward the Women, 1951 It's a Big Country, 1951 Across the Wide Missouri, 1950 The Next Voice You Hear..., 1949 Battleground, 1948 Yellow Sky, 1948 The Iron Curtain, 1947 Magic Town, 1946 Gallant Journey, 1945 Story of G.I. Joe, 1945 This Man's Navy, 1944 Buffalo Bill, 1943 The Ox-Bow Incident, 1942 Thunder Birds [Soldiers of the Air], 1942 Roxie Hart, 1939 The Light That Failed, 1939 Beau Geste, 1938 Men with Wings, 1937 A Star Is Born, 1936 The Robin Hood of El Dorado, 1935 The Call of the Wild, 1934 The President Vanishes, 1934 Stingaree, 1934 Viva Villa!, 1933 Wild Boys of the Road, 1933 Midnight Mary, 1932 The Conquerors, 1932 So Big!, 1931 Night Nurse, 1931 The Public Enemy, 1931 Other Men's Women, 1930 Young Eagles, 1929 The

Wellman—WINGS—2

Man I Love, 1928 Beggars of Life, 1928 Ladies of the Mob, 1928 The Legion of the Condemned, 1927 Wings, 1926 The Cat's Pajamas, 1926 The Boob, 1924 The Vagabond Trail, 1924 Not a Drum Was Heard, 1923 Cupid's Fireman, 1923 Big Dan, 1923 Second Hand Love, 1923 The Man Who Won, and 1920 The Twins of Suffering Creek. He won a Best Writing Oscar for A Star is Born (1937).

John Monk Saunders (November 22, 1895, Hinckley, Minnesota – March 11, 1940, Ft. Myers, Florida) won a best writing, original story Oscar for The Dawn Patrol (1930). Some of his other film credits are 1938 The Hidden Menace, 1938 A Yank at Oxford, 1936 Conquest of the Air, 1935 I Found Stella Parish, 1935 West Point of the Air, 1935 Devil Dogs of the Air, 1933 Ace of Aces, 1933 The Eagle and the Hawk, 1931 The Last Flight, 1931 The Finger Points, 1930 The Dawn Patrol, 1928 The Docks of New York, 1928 The Legion of the Condemned, and 1927 Wings. B.P. Schulberg (b. Benjamin Percival Schulberg, January 19, 1892, Bridgeport, Connecticut – February 25, 1957, Key Biscayne, Florida) was producer or associate producer for 108 films, some of which were 1943 City Without Men, 1942 Flight Lieutenant, 1942 The Adventures of Martin Eden, 1941 Bedtime Story, 1937 Blossoms on Broadway, 1937 She's No Lady, 1937 The Great Gambini, 1937 Her Husband Lies, 1937 John Meade's Woman, 1937 A Doctor's Diary, 1936 Meet Nero Wolfe, 1936 Counterfeit, 1935 Crime and Punishment, 1934 Little Miss Marker, 1934 Thirty Day Princess, 1933 Jennie Gerhardt, 1933 The Crime of the Century, 1932 Million Dollar Legs, 1930 The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu, 1929 The Virginian, 1928 Abie's Irish Rose, 1928 The Last Command, 1927 The Rough Riders, 1927 Underworld, 1927 Barbed Wire, 1927 Fireman, Save My Child, 1927 Wings, 1927 Special Delivery, 1926 Man of the Forest, 1926 Old Ironsides, 1926 We're in the Navy Now, 1925 Parisian Love, 1925 My Lady's Lips, 1925 The Lawful Cheater, 1925 Faint Perfume, 1925 The Boomerang, 1925 The Mansion of Aching Hearts, 1925 Capital Punishment, 1924 White Man, and 1921 Get Your Man. Lucien Hubbard (December 22, 1888, Fort Thomas, Kentucky – December 31, 1971, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California) has 59 producer credits, some of which are 1940 Street of Memories, 1940 Youth Will Be Served, 1940 The Bride Wore Crutches, 1939 Nick Carter, Master Detective, 1939 6,000 Enemies, 1938 The Texans, 1937 Ebb Tide, 1937 Song of the City, 1937 Under Cover of Night, 1936 Sinner Take All, 1936 The Longest Night, 1936 Speed, 1936 Moonlight Murder, 1935 Here Comes the Band, 1935 Public Hero #1, 1935 Shadow of Doubt, 1934 Straight Is the Way, 1934 You Can't Buy Everything, 1927 The Rough Riders, and 1927 Wings. Harry Perry (May 2, 1888 – February 9, 1985, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California) was cinematographer for 28 films: 1930 Hell's Angels, 1927 Now We're in the Air, 1927 Wings, 1925 The Midnight Flyer, 1925 The Vanishing American, 1925 Go Straight, 1925 The Mansion of Aching Hearts, 1925 Flattery, 1924 The Breath of Scandal, 1924 The Fighting American, 1923 The Broken Wing, 1923 April Showers, 1923 The Virginian, 1923 The Girl Who Came Back, 1923 Are You a Failure?, 1922 Shadows, 1922 Borderland, 1922 If You Believe It, It's So, 1922 The Ordeal, 1922 The Crimson Challenge, 1921 A Prince There Was, 1921 Cappy Ricks, 1921 The Conquest of Canaan, 1921 White and Unmarried, 1921 The City of Silent Men, 1921 The Faith Healer, 1921 The Easy Road, and 1920

The Sins of Rosanne. Clara Bow… Mary Preston (b. July 29, 1905, Brooklyn, New York – September 27, 1965, West Los Angeles, California) appeared in 55 films, some of which were 1933 Hoop-La, 1932 Call Her Savage, 1931 No Limit, 1930 Her Wedding Night, 1930 Love Among the Millionaires, 1930 True to the Navy, 1929 Dangerous Curves, 1929 The Wild Party, 1928 The Fleet's In, 1928 Ladies of the Mob, 1928 Red Hair, 1927 Hula, 1927 Wings, 1927 Rough House Rosie, 1927 Children of Divorce, 1927 It, 1926 Kid Boots, 1926 Mantrap, 1926 Dancing Mothers, 1926 Two Can Play, 1925 My Lady of Whims, 1925 The Ancient Mariner, 1925 The Plastic Age, 1925 Free to Love, 1925 The Primrose Path, 1925 Kiss Me Again, 1925 Parisian Love, 1925 My Lady's Lips, 1925 The Lawful Cheater, 1925 The Adventurous Sex, 1925 Capital Punishment, 1924 Helen's Babies, 1924 Daughters of Pleasure, 1924 Grit, 1923 Black Oxen, 1923 Maytime, 1923 The Daring Years, 1922 Down to the Sea in Ships, and 1922 Beyond the Rainbow. Charles 'Buddy' Rogers… Jack Powell (August 13, 1904, Olathe, Kansas – April 21, 1999, Rancho Mirage, California) appeared in 40 films, including 1957 The Parson and the Outlaw, 1948 An Innocent Affair, 1942 Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost, 1942 Mexican Spitfire at Sea, 1941 Mexican Spitfire's Baby, 1938 Let's Make a Night of It, 1935 Old Man Rhythm, 1933 Take a Chance, 1932 This Reckless Age, 1931 Working Girls, 1931 The Road to Reno, 1930 Heads Up, 1930 Young Eagles, 1929 Illusion, 1929 Close Harmony, 1928 Red Lips, 1928 Varsity, 1928 Abie's Irish Rose, 1927 Get Your Man, 1927 My Best Girl, 1927 Wings, 1926 So's Your Old Man, 1926 More Pay - Less Work, and 1926 Fascinating Youth. Richard Arlen… David Armstrong (b. Sylvanus Richard Van Mattimore, September 1, 1899, St. Paul, Minnesota – March 28, 1976, North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) has 177 acting credits, some of which are 1977 A Whale of a Tale, 1976 Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood, 1975 The Sky's the Limit, 1968 Buckskin, 1967 Fort Utah, 1967 The Road to Nashville, 1967 Red Tomahawk, 1966 Waco, 1966 Johnny Reno, 1965 Apache Uprising, 1965 Black Spurs, 1965 Young Fury, 1964 The Shepherd of the Hills, 1964 The Best Man, 1964 Law of the Lawless, 1964 Sex and the College Girl, 1963 The Young and the Brave, 1959-1961 “Lawman”, 1961 “Michael Shayne”, 1961 “Lock Up”, 1959-1961 “Bat Masterson”, 1960 “Whirlybirds”, 1959 Warlock, 1959 “Wanted: Dead or Alive”, 1956-1957 “Crossroads”, 1957 “Playhouse 90”, 1956 The Mountain, 1956 Hidden Guns, 1955 “The Whistler”, 1955 “The Loretta Young Show”, 1953 Sabre Jet, 1952 Flaming Feather, 1951 Silver City, 1949 Grand Canyon, 1947 Buffalo Bill Rides Again, 1945 The Phantom Speaks, 1944 That's My Baby!, 1944 The Lady and the Monster, 1943 Submarine Alert, 1943 Aerial Gunner, 1942 Torpedo Boat, 1941 Raiders of the Desert, 1941 Forced Landing, 1941 Power Dive, 1941 Mutiny in the Arctic, 1940 Black Diamonds, 1940 Hot Steel, 1939 Mutiny on the Blackhawk, 1939 Missing Daughters, 1938

Wellman—WINGS—3

Call of the Yukon, 1937 Secret Valley, 1936 The Mine with the Iron Door, 1935 Helldorado, 1934 Ready for Love, 1934 Come On, Marines!, 1933 Alice in Wonderland, 1933 Hell and High Water, 1933 Golden Harvest, 1932 Island of Lost Souls, 1932 Tiger Shark, 1932 Guilty as Hell, 1931 Touchdown, 1931 Caught, 1931 Gun Smoke, 1931 The Conquering Horde, 1930 The Santa Fe Trail, 1930 The Border Legion, 1930 Paramount on Parade, 1930 The Light of Western Stars, 1929 The Virginian, 1929 Dangerous Curves, 1929 The Four Feathers, 1928 Manhattan Cocktail, 1928 Beggars of Life, 1928 Ladies of the Mob, 1928 Under the Tonto Rim, 1927 The Blood Ship, 1927 Rolled Stockings, 1927 Wings, 1926 Old Ironsides, 1926 Behind the Front, and 1925 In the Name of Love. Jobyna Ralston… Sylvia Lewis (b. Jobyna Lancaster Raulston, November 21, 1899, South Pittsburg, Tennessee – January 22, 1967, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California) appeared in 80 films, nearly all of them shorts, some of which are 1931 Sheer Luck, 1930 Rough Waters, 1929 Some Mother's Boy, 1928 The Power of the Press, 1927 Little Mickey Grogan, 1927 Pretty Clothes, 1927 Wings, 1927 Special Delivery, 1927 The Kid Brother, 1925 The Freshman, 1922 Soak the Sheik (short), 1922 Bone Dry (short), 1922 The Landlubber (short), 1921 Humor Risk (short), 1921 The Brown Derby (short), 1920 Ball Bearing, But Hard Running (short), 1919 The Shimmy Jim (short), 1919 The Sultan of Djazz (short), and 1919 Starting Out in Life (short). Gary Cooper… Cadet White (b. Frank James Cooper, May 7, 1901, Helena, Montana – May 13, 1961, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California) won an honorary Oscar in 196`1 and a best actor Oscar for High Noon (1952). Some of his other 115 films were 1961 The Naked Edge, 1959 The Wreck of the Mary Deare, 1959 They Came to Cordura, 1959 Alias Jesse James, 1959 The Hanging Tree, 1958 Man of the West, 1958 Ten North Frederick, 1957 Love in the Afternoon, 1956 Friendly Persuasion, 1955 The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell, 1954 Vera Cruz, 1954 Garden of Evil, 1952 Springfield Rifle, 1952 High Noon, 1951 Distant Drums, 1951 It's a Big Country, 1951 You're in the Navy Now, 1950 Dallas, 1950 Bright Leaf, 1949 Task Force, 1949 The Fountainhead, 1947 Unconquered, 1946 Cloak and Dagger, 1945 Saratoga Trunk, 1945 Along Came Jones, 1944 Casanova Brown, 1943 For Whom the Bell Tolls, 1942 The Pride of the Yankees, 1941 Sergeant York, 1941 Meet John Doe, 1940 North West Mounted Police, 1940 The Westerner, 1939 Beau Geste, 1938 The Cowboy and the Lady, 1938 The Adventures of Marco Polo, 1938 Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, 1936 The Plainsman, 1936 The General Died at Dawn, 1936 Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, 1935 The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, 1933 Alice in Wonderland, 1933 Today We Live, 1932 A Farewell to Arms, 1931 His Woman, 1931 I Take This Woman, 1931 City Streets, 1930 Morocco, 1930 The Texan, 1930 Only the Brave, 1929 The Virginian, 1929 Betrayal, 1928 Red Hair, 1928 The Legion of the Condemned, 1927 Nevada, 1927 The Last Outlaw, 1927 Wings, 1927 Children of Divorce, 1927 Arizona Bound, 1927 It, 1926 The Winning of Barbara Worth, 1925 Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, 1925 The Eagle, 1925 The Vanishing American, 1925 Wild Horse Mesa, and 1925 Riders of the Purple Sage. Hedda Hopper… Mrs. Powell (b. Elda Furry, May 2, 1885, Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania – February 1, 1966, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) appeared in 143 films and TV programs, among them 1966 “Alice in Wonderland or What's a Nice Kid Like You Doing in a Place Like This?”, 1957 “Playhouse 90”, 1953 “Goodyear

Playhouse”, 1942 Reap the Wild Wind, 1941 Life with Henry, 1940 Cross-Country Romance, 1940 Queen of the Mob, 1939 Laugh It Off, 1939 That's Right - You're Wrong, 1939 The Women, 1938 Thanks for the Memory, 1938 Maid's Night Out, 1938 Tarzan's Revenge, 1937 Artists & Models, 1937 Topper, 1936 Dracula's Daughter, 1935 I Live My Life, 1934 Let's Be Ritzy, 1934 Bombay Mail, 1933 The Barbarian, 1932 Night World, 1932 The Man Who Played God, 1931 Flying High, 1931 The Mystery Train, 1931 Men Call It Love, 1930 War Nurse, 1930 Our Blushing Brides, 1930 Let Us Be Gay, 1930 Holiday, 1929 The Racketeer, 1929 His Glorious Night, 1929 Girls Gone Wild, 1928 Runaway Girls, 1928 Undressed, 1928 Green Grass Widows, 1928 Harold Teen, 1928 The Chorus Kid, 1928 The Port of Missing Girls, 1928 The Whip Woman, 1927 One Woman to Another, 1927 Adam and Evil, 1927 Black Tears, 1927 Wings, 1927 Children of Divorce, 1927 Venus of Venice, 1926 Fools of Fashion, 1926 Don Juan, 1926 Pleasures of the Rich, 1925 Raffles, 1925 Her Market Value, 1924 Another Scandal, 1924 Why Men Leave Home, 1923 Reno, 1922 Sherlock Holmes, 1919 Sadie Love, 1919 The Third Degree, 1918 Virtuous Wives, 1917 Seven Keys to Baldpate, 1917 Her Excellency, the Governor, and 1916 The Battle of Hearts. She is best known, however, as a gossip columnist. According to Wikipedia, “She had been a small-time actress of stage and screen for years before being offered the chance to write a column 'Hedda Hopper's Hollywood' in the Los Angeles Times in 1938. This revealed a gift for invective so vicious that it brought physical retaliation from Spencer Tracy and Joseph Cotten, among others, and she also named suspected communists in the McCarthy era. Hopper continued to write gossip to the end, her work appearing in countless magazines and later on radio.”

From World Film Directors Volume I. Ed. John Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson Co. NY 1987 ‘WILLIAM WELLMAN” entry by John A. Gallagher born February 29, 1896 Brookline MA. “Wild Bill” Expelled from Newton High for dropping a stink bomb on the principal’s head. Wellman worked briefly and ingloriously in the wool, candy, and lumber trades before a plane flight revealed his true vocation: “I just had to fly.” In 1917 Wellman went to war to become a flier. He joined the French Foreign Legion—a necessary (and traumatic) preliminary—and then the Lafayette Flying Corps, an offshoot of the

Wellman—WINGS—4

more famous Lafayette Escadrille. As a fighter pilot with the Black Cat squadron, Wellman shot down three German aircraft before his own plane was brought down, leaving him with back injuries that troubled him for the rest of his life. Wellman left the Lafayette Flying Corps in March 1918 with a Croix de Guerre and several American citations and returned to a hero’s welcome in Boston. With the help of a ghostwriter he described his adventures in Go, Get ‘Em, published in Boston in late 1918. By that time he was serving in the American Air Corps as a flight instructor at Rockwell Field, San Diego, not very far from Hollywood. “There were a lot of strange new people there,” he said. “actors and actresses, and they liked me and the uniform and the medals; and I was very humble and my limp was eye-catching.” Before the war was over, Wellman was married to a beautiful young starlet, Helene Chadwick. They separated a month later and were subsequently divorced. Released from the Air Corps at the end of the war, Wellman remembered the telegram he had received from Douglas Fairbanks congratulating him on his war efforts and offering him a job. Donning his uniform and his medals, he went to see Fairbanks, by then a major star, and was promptly given a sizable part in comedy Western, The Knickerbocker Buckaroo (1919). Wellman found himself excited by the movie business but disgusted by the sight of himself on screen at the premiere, mugging in thick makeup: “I stayed for just half the picture and then went out and vomited for no reason at all.” If he could not stomach so unmanly a profession as acting, Wellman was not ready to give up on Hollywood. Discovering how much Al Parker had been paid for The Knickerbocker Buckaroo. He decided that he could be happy behind the camera. He started modestly as a messenger at the Goldwyn studios (where he had to deliver fan mail to his estranged wife). Wellman took every chance he could to study the working methods of staff directors like Maurice Tourneur, Frank Lloyd, and Tod Browning. In A Short Time for Insanity, his autobiography, he said that he “stole scripts, new ones, old ones, and pored over them, always from a director’s point-of-view.” The ambitious messenger caught the attention of Will Rogers, through whose influence he was soon promoted to assistant propman. But Wellman’s real break came when General Pershing visited the Goldwyn studios and recognized the ex-aviator (from a wartime encounter in a Paris brothel, according to Wellman). The front office was impressed by this comradely meeting, and Wellman was promoted to assistant director, in this capacity working for Clarence Badger, E. Mason Hopper, and Alfred Green before moving to the Fox studio in late 1921. At Fox, Wellman was assistant to Harry Beaumont, Colin Campbell, Emmett Flynn, and his mentor Bernard J. Durning. The latter is now almost forgotten, but Wellman told Kevin Brownlow that Durning “gave me two of the greatest years I ever had and taught me more than anybody in the business, He made all those thrilling melodramas and you learned everything from

tem—action, pacing, stunts. This was the greatest school a director ever had.” When Durning became ill during the making of The Eleventh Hour (1923), Wellman stepped in to finish the picture, pleasing the Fox executives enough to make him a full-fledged director. His first feature was a Dustin Farnum vehicle, The Man Who Won (1923). A succession of low-budget Buck Jones melodramas followed. When they proved moderately successful. Wellman asked for a raise and was promptly fired. It was the first of his many battles with executives and producers. Thanks to his intransigent nature, “Wild Bill” subsequently worked in every major studio in Hollywood, with the exception of Universal. Out of work for a year, Wellman joined MGM in 1925, taking a demotion to assistant director. Soon afterwards he met a singer and dancer named Margery Chapin and embarked on another

short-lived marriage. After “doctoring” Robert Vignola’s The Way of a Girl and Josef von Sternberg and Phil Rosen’s The Exquisite Sinner, Wellman was given a project of his own, The Boob, one of Joan Crawford’s first movies, and, the director proudly claims, her worst. Completed in September 1925, The Boob was not released for six months and so was preceded into theatres by Wellman’s next picture When Husbands Flirt, made for Columbia in 1925. Wellman was already building a reputation as a

phenomenally rapid worker, and tempted by a bonus, he filmed this Dorothy Arzner script in less than four days. The independent producer B. P. Schulberg was impressed and signed Wellman to a contract with his Preferred Pictures. When Schulberg joined Famous Players-Lasky (soon to become Paramount), he took the young director with him. Wellman’s first film at Paramount was (in his own words) an “atrocious” comedy, The Cat’s Pajamas (1926)—an ill-advised attempt to make an adult star of the child actress Betty Bronson. Wellman was almost fired, but Paramount gave him one more chance with You Never Know Women (1926), adapted by Benjamin Glazer from a story by Ernest Vajda. It was a backstage romance with Florence Vidor as the star of a Russian theatrical troupe, Lowell Sherman and Clive Brook as the two men who want her. This has been called the most “European” of Wellman’s films, showing the influence of German expressionism in Victor Milner’s dramatic lighting, and full of bravura effects. A memorable example occurs in the climactic scene when the heroine, pursued through the darkened theatre by the lustful Sherman, jumps into a magician’s rigged cabinet and disappears in a puff of smoke. Notably well acted, the picture was both a critical and commercial success, rehabilitating Wellman’s reputation at Paramount. When King Vidor’s The Big Parade and Raoul Walsh’s What Price Glory? registered at the box office, Paramount wanted its own World War I epic. They settled on a flying story suggested by John Monk

Wellman—WINGS—5

Saunders, himself a wartime pilot. Although Wellman had only minor credits up to that time, he was the only director in Hollywood with aerial combat experience, and with Schulberg’s support, he was handed this choice assignment. John Monk Saunders was sent to Washington to solicit government help. And in the end, according to Kevin Brownlow. Wings “tied up thousands of soldiers, virtually all the pursuit planes the air force had. Billions of dollars worth of equipment—and some of the finest military pilots in the country.” There were angry speeches in Washington before the shooting was completed. Wings (1927) was the first important picture to deal with the role of the plane in World War I. It also embodied several themes dear to Wellman’s heart—the romantic triangle, often squared by the self-abnegation of one of the rivals; male friendship; and the horseplaying but deeply felt comradeship of groups of men engaged in some shared—and usually dangerous—endeavor. Wings follows the wartime fortunes of two young fighter pilots, played by Charles “Buddy” Rogers and Richard Arlen. Rivals for the love of the same woman, they become friends after a bloody fistfight. In the end, through a tragic (or melodramatic) accident, Rogers shoots down and kills Arlen when the latter is escaping from the enemy lines in a German plane. Since both male leads were virtually unknown, the studio cast its biggest box-office draw, Clara Bow, as the heroine. Wellman, known as a “one take” director, became a perfectionist in the filming of Wings, shooting scenes over and over again until he was satisfied with them. Up to that time, most “aerial” scenes had actually been shot on the ground, but in this film Wellman stipulated that there should be no faking. The cinematographer Harry Perry and his huge team of cameramen shot close-ups of the flyers from the rear cockpits of their planes and followed dogfights from a whole squadron of camera planes. The movie’s climax is a reenactment of the Battle of Saint Mihiel, shot on the plains outside San Antonio, Texas. A huge area was pounded by field guns until it became a convincing replica of the mud and chaos on the western front. A battery of cameras was mounted on a hundred-foot tower, with a further array of twenty-eight hand-held Eyemos in other strategic positions. The battle itself was planned like a real one by army officers in consultation with filmmakers, and 3,500 troops and sixty pilots were rehearsed for ten days. Previewed in San Antonio as a fourteen-reeler, Wings was cut to 12,300 feet for its New York premiere, when the major scenes were projected in Magnascope on a double-size screen. Then or later (accounts differ), sound effects were added to convey the din of battle. Wings was a huge success, praised by flyers for its authenticity and by critics for its spectacle. Photoplay’s reviewer found the melodramatic plot “weakly built” and lacking in conviction, “with the exception of several touching scenes,” but many agreed with Quinn Martin that “there has been no movie…which has

surpassed it in impressing upon an audience a feeling of personal participation.” In its day, the film had an impact on popular culture comparable to that of Star Wars. The aviator became the favorite hero of boys’ adventure stories, and the movie’s financial success precipitated a ‘whole cycle of flying dramas, including Howard Hawks’ Dawn Patrol (1930) and Howard Hughes’ Hell’s Angels (1930). It made stars of both Rogers and Arlen and also boosted the career of Gary Cooper, who made a strong impression in a brief scene in a training camp. Wings received the first Oscar ever awarded for best picture of the year, establishing Wellman as a major director at the age of thirty-one. Writing in 1978 in The War, the West, and the Wilderness, Kevin Brownlow wrote that “Wings gets better the older it becomes. Values that once seemed overly sentimental now seem so much a part of their time that they no longer irritate. For most of its length, Wings

avoids the grimness of war and captures exactly the fierce romanticism that so many veterans feel for it….Wellman hurls his camera around the vast battlefield with exhilarating abandon. Even by today’s standards, his setups seem remarkably bold. Although troops die with rather operatic gestures, his epic handling of the big drive is overwhelming, and the superimposition of thousands of men marching into a horizon where their destruction is pictured in split screen is a moment worthy of Abel Gance’s classic J’accuse.” Gary Cooper starred in Wellman’s next movie, The Legion of the Condemned (1928), another World War I aviation drama, with

Fay Wray as a beautiful spy. Scripted by John Monk Saunders, and using a great deal of material originally shot for Wings, it was generally well received. Not so Ladies of the Mob (1928), Wellman’s first crime movie, in which he worked once more with Clara Bow and Richard Arlen. Mordaunt Hall found it gloomy, artificial and unedifying.” Ladies of the Mob appears to be a lost film, like the majority of Wellman’s silents. An exception—and one of his best early films—is Beggars of Life (1928) featuring Arlen, Louise Brooks, and Wallace Beery. Brooks gave one of her best performances as a girl who kills her foster father when he tries to rape her, and then goes on the run with a gentle young hobo. Most of the picture was shot in Jacumba, California, near the Mexican border, where Wellman and his crew are said to have plunged into a riotous two weeks of drinking, gambling, and brawling. Margaret Chapin accompanied her husband to Jacumba, acting as a script girl, but the marriage ended soon afterward. Beggars of Life, which offers the first clear indication of Wellman’s burgeoning social conscience, includes one sound scene in which Beery, as the truculent bum Oklahoma Red, sings a song. Told that Beery would have to stand motionless in this scene because the microphone was immovable, Wellman (according to eyewitness David Selznick) hung it on a broom handle and shot the scene with Beery singing as he walked. Wellman thus joins the sizable company of directors credited with the invention of the boom microphone.

Wellman—WINGS—6

Whether or not the claim is correct. Beggars of Life, as Frank Thompson writes, “is a testament of Wellman’s exhilaration with movement”—a film about movement, about people who are bound to advance constantly….The story and acting are simple catalysts that make the motion occur.” On the basis of this film and Wings, Wellman was named by Film Daily as one of the world’s best directors for 1928-1929. He made the transition to sound easily, and as Thompson says, his first talkies “moved just as much as his silents,” differing from them mostly in the matter of close-ups. Wellman said, “You use close-ups…to get a point over.” With dialogue to do this for him, he seldom moved in closer than a medium shot, even at moments of high drama. Wellman’s relationship with Paramount, always shaky, was turning sour. His early sound films there were strictly routine assignments….Disarmingly modest about his work, Wellman said that “for every good picture, I made five or six stinkers. But I always tried to do it a little differently. I don’t know whether I accomplished it, but I tried.” In the opinion of his admirers, he succeeded much better than he has been given credit for…. Wellman made one more film at Paramount, another variation on the Wings formula called Young Eagles (1930), then broke his contract to join Warner Brothers-First National. At about the same time he married a polo-playing flyer named Marjorie Crawford—another short-lived union. Wellman stayed with Warners for three years, finding a kindred spirit in the tough young production chief Darryl F. Zanuck. His first two Warner assignments showed his versatility—the football musical Maybe It’s Love (1930) with Joe E. Brown, and the railroad drama Other Men’s Women (1931), starring Mary Astor and featuring in minor roles Joan Blondell and James Cagney. Cagney was originally cast as the protagonists’s sidekick in Wellman’s next picture The Public Enemy (1931) but, on the director’s recommendation, wound up with the lead role. The movie traces the rise and fall of a Chicago mobster, Tom Powers. It was made in twenty-six days at a cost of $151,000. Economically photographed by Dev Jennings, it made excellent use of stock shots of turn-of-the-century Chicago in a scene-setting prologue.It is said that Wellman shot only 360 feet of film that was not used in the final cut. Zanuck had been dubious about the project, believing that the gangster genre was played out. Wellman won him over by promising to make The Public Enemy “the toughest goddam one of them all.” He succeeded, especially in the notorious scene in which Cagney mashes half a grapefruit into the face of his mistress (Mae Clarke) and the nightmarish finale, when Tom Powers’ trussed and bullet-ridden corpse is delivered to his mother’s house (where she is playing “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” on the Victrola.

The film’s tight editing, mobile camerawork, and powerful use of sound, together with Cagney’s electric performance, made it, as Variety’s Reviewer wrote, the “roughest, toughest, and best of the gang films to date….It’s lowbrow material given such workmanship as to make it highbrow.” Richard Watts Jr. went further, finding in the picture “a quality of grim directness, Zolaesque power, and chilling credibility which makes it far more real and infinitely impressive than the run of gangster films.”…. Wellman flourished at Warners, where his taut style was ideally suited to the studio’s tabloid approach to contemporary issues. The speed and economy of his filmmaking was much appreciated by the thrifty Jack Warner. Having propelled Cagney to stardom in the Public Enemy, he set Barbara Stanwyck on the same path in Night Nurse (1931), a lurid but fast-paced and highly entertaining thriller. Stanwyck plays an idealistic young nurse who rescues two little girls from the clutches of a murderous doctor and his brutal chauffeur (Clark Gable). Wellman was notoriously more at home with actors than actresses, but the tough and infazable Stanwyck was an exception, and he made several more movies with her, at Warners and elsewhere. At this point in his career Wellman was churning out movies at the rate of five or six a year. Few of them are of much artistic

interest, though several are remarkable for the candor with which they address America’s problems during the depression. Notable examples are The Conquerors (1932) made on loan to RKO and drawing parallels between the Depression and the earlier economic collapse of 1873, and Heroes for Sale (1933). The latter had Richard Barthelmess as a wounded war hero who comes home addicted to the morphine administered to him as a painkiller. Cured of his addiction, he reenters society in the midst of the depression, confused and disillusioned, his job gone, his wife dead. This film offers an astonishingly bleak view of the American dream gone wrong. The

upbeat ending, pinning its faith on President Roosevelt’s inaugural address, struck many critics as artificial and unconvincing. In the same year (1933), which saw the release of no fewer than seven of his pictures, Wellman made one of the best films o his career, Wild Boys of the Road. Scripted by Earl Baldwin, it shows how, little by little, a bunch of middle-class young people have their Andy Hardy certainties stripped away from them by the deepening Depression until they are forced to live on the run, stealing and begging to survive. As in Heroes for Sale, the film’s bleak message is softened at the end. Charged with vagrancy and armed robbery, the central trio are told by a magistrate sympathetic to the New Deal that “things are going to get better now.” The largely unknown cast was headed by Frankie Darro, Rochelle Hudson, and Dorothy Coonan, the nineteen-year-old dancer who in March 1934 became Wellman’s fourth (and last) wife, and in time the mother of their seven children. [She was actually his fifth wife. His first, a Frenchwoman, was not revealed until much later.]

Wellman—WINGS—7

Wild Boys did poorly at the box office and had a mixed reception from contemporary critics. A reviewer in the New York Times wrote that “by endowing the film with a happy ending, the producers have robbed it of its value as a social challenge.” On the other hand, William Troy thought that “never before does one recall having witnessed an American picture whose climax is made to consist in a pitched battle between a band of ragged outlaws and the police, in which the sympathy is manifestly with the former.” The film’s reputation has grown since then. It has found its way onto a number of college courses, and Todd McCarthy, in Jean-Pierre Coursodon’s American Directors, goes so far as to describe it as “Wellman’s one film with a claim to greatness.” Wellman had put a great deal of himself into Wild Boys and was stung by its apparent failure. His next Warners assignment was a college musical, College Coach (1933)—a briskly cynical comedy, featuring a surprisingly vicious fistfight between Dick Powell and Lyle Talbot. After that Wellman went freelance for a time, directing Spencer Tracy in a comdy-drama about wiretapping, Looking for Trouble (1934), for Zanuck’s newly formed 20th Century Pictures, then Stingaree (194) at RKO—a musical romance based on E. w. Hornung’s stories about an Australian Robin Hood. Looking for Trouble, appropriately enough, provided ample evidence of Wellman’s explosive temper—he and Tracy disliked each other on sight, and the two men twice had to be forcibly extracted from brawls…. Wellman spent much of his time at MGM feuding with studio head Louis B. Mayer and consequently was relegated to run-of-the-mill material….In 1937 Wellman asked to be released from his Metro contract and rejoined David O. Selznick at his new Selznick-International Pictures. Wellman professed a hatred of producers throughout his career, but he and Selznick worked very well together. Their first collaboration at Selznick-International was A Star is Born (1937), scripted by Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, and Robert Carson from a story devised by Carson and Wellman. It draws on the real life tragedies of such fallen idols as John Gilbert and John Barrymore, tracing the rise to stardom of Vicki Lester (Janet Gaynor) as her alcoholic husband, Norman Maine (Frederic March), plummets from celebrity to obscurity, finally killing himself to save her career. This often savage meditation on what lay behind the glamour and glitter of Hollywood was a smash hit. “For about the first time,” wrote Otis Ferguson, “the mechanics of the industry are worked in with thorough coverage….And all done with a sense of the actual hardness and fabulous confusion….W. Howard Greene received a special Oscar for his Technicolor photography, which avoided the garishness of most pioneer color movies, and Wellman and Carson shared another Academy Award for best original story….The immense success of A Star is Born and Nothing Sacred brought Wellman a contract with Paramount, where for five years he produced as well as directed his films. His first project there was a labor of love, Men With Wings (1938), tracing the growth of aviation through the melodramatic story of two pioneering aviators vaguely modeled on the Wright Brothers. Like most of Wellman’s flying

films, this one is marred by its romantic subplot, which threatens to take over the movie. The best sequences recapture the excitement of the aerial work in Wings, with the addition of sound and color. A much better film followed, a remake of Herbert Brenon’s 1926 adaptation of P. C. Wren’s novel of the French Foreign Legion, Beau Geste. Wellman assembled an impressive cast, with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and Robert Preston as the gallant Geste

brothers and Brian Donlevy as the sadistic Sergeant Markoff.Wellman’s Beau Geste closely follows Brenon’s silent version and was filmed on the same location, in the desert near Yuma, Arizona…. Walter Van Tilburg Clark’s 1940 novel The Ox-Bow Incident was a “serious Western,” using the genre as a backdrop for a poetic tragedy of intolerance and mob violence. Wellman fell in love with the book and bought the rights

himself. He approached several studios, but the downbeat story—with little action and no romance—was deemed uncommercial. Finally , he made a deal with 20th Century-Fox, which agreed to finance the movie on condition that he direct a picture a year for the studio for five years—two of them to be chosen by Zanuck and directed by Wellman whether he liked them or not. The Ox-Bow Incident is set in Nevada in 1885. The movie failed at the box office, as the industry cynics had predicted. Its critical reception, on the other hand, was enthusiastic. The Ox-Bow Incident was nominated for a best picture Oscar and was soon established as a classic of the genre. However, James Agee wrote that this, “one of the best and most interesting pictures I have seen for a long time,” was ultimately disappointing on account of its “stiff overconsciousness.” It seemed to him “a mosaic of over-appreciated effects which continually robbed nature of its own warmth and energy.”… For the first time since The Ox-Bow Incident, Wellman found a project with which he could involve himself personally and passionately. The Story of GI Joe (1945), based on the writings of war correspondent Ernie Pyle, was offered to him by the independent producer Lester Cowan. Wellman at first resisted, saying that he hated “the God-damned infantry,” but Cowan won him over, and the film was one of the best of his career. The story of GI Joe offers an honest and humanistic view of the common infantryman as seen through the exploits and sufferings of one patrol. Burgess Meredith played Pyle, and Wellman took Robert Mitchum out of B-movies to play the patrol leader Lieutenant Walker—so powerfully that he was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actor. “Final judgment must wait on time,” wrote Richard Griffith, “but I feel that Wellman’s film deserves to stand beside Three Soldiers, Brady’s Civil War photographs, and the pioneer work of Ambrose Bierce and Stephen Crane as one of the greatest documents of warfare.” James Agee called it “a tragic and eternal work of art.” Wellman never again reached such heights, but the films he made over the following twelve years included some excellent work. Among his successes were two movies made in 1948 for 20th

Wellman—WINGS—8

Century-Fox: the spy thriller The Iron Curtain and Yellow Sky, a tough and exciting Western based on a story by W. R. Burnett…. Wellman had high hopes for Lafayette Escadrille (1958), intended as an autobiographical memoir of his days of flying and fighting. His story had a tragic ending, but Warner Brothers made him change it. “The story was too close to me,” he said later, “and it nearly broke my tough old heart when they wouldn’t let me make it the way it really happened. . . .The happy ending destroyed the whole thing, and I got out of the business because of it.” Wellman retired in 1962 but continued to write scripts and toy with various projects. He was awarded the D.W. Griffith Award in 1972 and has been honored by major retrospectives in Los Angeles and at the British Film Institute. Wellman died of leukemia at the age of seventy-nine, and as he requested, his ashes were scattered from the skies. Like his friends John Ford, Victor Fleming, Raoul Walsh, and Howard Hawks, Wellman was a hard-nosed man’s man who refused to regard himself as anything so effete as an artist and insisted that his only aim was to entertain. He has often been compared to Hawks because of their similarity of subject matter and their shared preoccupation with groups of professionals in crisis situations. Unlike Hawks, however, Wellman would direct virtually anything that a studio handed him. “You make all kinds of things,” he said, “and that, I think, is what gives you the background to eventually make some very lucky picture.” For nearly forty years, Wellman was regarded as one of the best directors in Hollywood. His reputation went into decline in the 1950s, and much of his best work was forgotten. You Never Know Women, Beggars of Life, Heroes for Sale, The President Vanishes, and The Robin Hood of El Dorado went unseen for years, until Wellman was rediscovered and championed by such critics as Kevin Brownlow, Richard Schickel, Gerald Peary, Frank Thompson, and Manny Farber. Wellman prided himself on working fast, and along the way he made many poor films. At his best, as Richard Combs writes, he “has been compared, on the one hand, to Griffith for the simplicity and lyricism of his treatment of a social order and its outcasts…and, on the other, to Stroheim for an inclination toward symbolism, edging close to expressionism in some of the effects by which he attempts to give an entirely subjective cast to the action.” The unevenness of his work and its stylistic eclecticism has made it difficult for admirers to claim auteur status for him, but not impossible. Frank Thompson, for one, maintains that “his films’ concerns, attitudes, moral perspectives, visual and aural styles are inextricably tied in with Wellman’s tastes, moods, and prejudices. There is a wholeness to his work—in style, quality, and point-of-view—that separates it from the run-of-the-mill studio product for which it is often mistaken.” Another of Wellman’s champions, Manny Farber, suggests that “in any Bill Wellman operation, there are at least four directors—a sentimentalist, deep thinker, hooey vaudevillian, and an expedient short-cut artist whose special love is for mulish toughs expressing

themselves in drop-kicking heads and somber standing around. Wellman is at his best in stiff, vulgar, low-pulp material. In that setup he has a low-budget ingenuity, which creates flashes of ferocious brassiness, an authentic practical-joke violence, and a brainless hell-raising.” As Henri Agel wrote as long ago as 1963, “Wellman’s handicap is that he has no doubt made too many films….He will have to be patiently rediscovered.”

From The Man and His Wings: William A. Wellman and the Making of the First Best Picture. William Wellman Jr. Praeger, Westport, CT & London, 2006. Before 1926, there had been some aerial work in films; however, flying footage was gathered from independent sources, government financed films, and with the use of miniatures. Actors were not seen in actual flight. When an actor or stunt pilot was seen in the air, that footage was shot on the ground to simulate in flight. Wellman believed that the story and screenplay were of the utmost importance. John Saunders was an extremely helpful ally, as he and Wellman spoke the same flyer’s lingo. Before and during production, Wellman interjected the script with many ingredients that he had experienced during his days in France and at the front…

By the time September 1926 rolled around, the Wings company had been a mainstay in the community [in San Antonio Texas] for a long time. After six months of pre-production, with the full support of the War Department and $16 million worth of government manpower and equipment, and a production budget of $2 million—the most expensive budget of all-time!—the Wings express blasted off from Paramount Studios and landed in San Antonio, Texas. Wellman later wrote, “We stayed at the Saint Anthony Hotel and were there for nine months. I know that was the correct time because the elevator operators were girls and they all became pregnant. They were replaced by old men, and the company’s hunting grounds were barren. Victor Fleming was making The Rough Riders at the same time and was staying at the same hotel. San Antonio became the Armageddon of a magnificent sexual Donnybrook. The town was lousy with movie people, and if you think that contributes to a state of tranquility, you don’t know your motion picture ABCs. To recount all that happens when a company of well over two hundred are taken away from their homes and families, and dumped into a strange locale? It’s rough on the company and rough on the locale. The fires that start burning are burning in every neighborhood in the country. The only difference being that we who lit the match are in the movies. We are monkeys in a weird cage. There is something unique about us, and only we know what it is. Maybe the closest to us is a doctor. His business is human beings, sick ones. Our business is the same, only our beings are not suffering, they are acting suffering or acting happiness, success or failure, excitement or boredom, life or death—everything that can happen to a human being, every thought they posses the actor echoes, the writer writes, the director directs, the cameraman photographs, and every other department has a share in.

Wellman—WINGS—9

Day in and day out, year after year, you are crying or you are laughing, you are tense or relaxed, your emotions are turned on and off like a spigot, and you must be careful not to become so callused that when the real thing happens it hasn’t been robbed of its vitality. A motion picture company lives hard and plays hard, and they better or they will all go nuts.”… From the get-go, Wellman got along with the Air Corps and their officers; the Army was another matter. Wellman explained, “We had the army too, thousands of them, infantry, artillery, the works, and in command a general who had two monumental hatreds: fliers and movie people. He met me, the director, and immediately disliked me. This has happened to me many times before, but never so quickly. I hardly drew a breath and I was in the doghouse, for three hatreds: I was an ex-flier turned motion-picture director and I was only twenty-nine years old, and apparently anybody under forty was to him ungrown. We had a couple of very hot vendettas, and I could get nowhere with the old boy until I reminded him that whether he liked it or not, he was working for Paramount Pictures and that I, despite my age, was the director of the Paramount picture called Wings and brought a copy of the orders from the War Department as a convincer. It convinced. The old boy was still in the army. After two months of shooting, Wellman decided to throw away everything they had filmed. The flying scenes didn’t look real. Jesse Lasky later wrote, “The company entrained to Texas-—and sat there. Wellman stubbornly refused to start shooting until there were clouds in the sky. There were days on end of perfect sunshine, and our $200-a-week director wouldn’t turn on a camera, while overhead mounted at thousands of dollars a day. I confess that we were about ready to yank him off the picture and replace him with someone who would be more amenable.” Wellman wrote, “Say you can’t shoot a dogfight without clouds to a guy who doesn’t know anything about flying and he thinks you’re nuts. He’ll say, ‘Why can’t you?’ It’s unattractive. Number two, you get no sense of speed, because there’s nothing there that’s parallel. You need something solid behind the planes. The clouds give you that, but against a blue sky, it’s like a lot of goddam flies! And photographically, it’s terrible.”… Since no aerial photography on or near this scale had been done previously, a new book would have to be written. Both hand-cranked and battery-run cameras were standard for the era. Cranking by hand was preferred because the operator could control the speed of the action by cranking slower or faster. The motorized camera filmed at the same speed. During the early attempts at Wings photography, the operators tried to hand-hold and crank the cameras while flying

alongside the picture planes. There was too much movement of camera and plane. Even bolting the camera down did not solve the problems. Both the camera plane and picture plane moved in opposition to one another—the flimsy crafts vibrated, wobbled, and shook with the wind, moving backward and forward, up and down, and side to side, resulting in a shot that was unsteady, unclear, and uncomfortable to the eye of the audience. E. Burton Steene saved the day! Wellman recalled, “Burton Steene was the number one aerial photographer of the 20s and I grabbed him for Wings, the luckiest grab I ever made. He had a camera with an Akeley head, which means it had gears, a pan handle and a frightening whine to it as Burton panned up or down or from side to side. For 1926, it was unbelievable and Burton was so expert at it, he shot ninety percent of all the air scenes in Wings.” Because stunt pilots, not the actors, were flying the picture planes, the cameramen couldn’t get close or the cameras would identify them instead of Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen. Therefore,

no close-ups! Wellman tried shooting close-ups on the ground, faking the fact that they weren’t in the air, but it looked completely unreal. Wellman himself took to the skies to view the complex problems. He and Harry Perry discussed all the possibilities and made a number of decisions: *Camera mounts would be created and fastened or strapped to the fuselages of the planes. *Platforms and up to one-hundred-foot towers would be constructed from the ground to photograph the low-flying aircraft and the ground warfare. *Thirteen camera operators would film the aerial sequences. *There would be no trickery in the filming of actors flying—Buddy Rogers and Richard Arlen would learn to fly. Motor-driven cameras would be mounted on the front of two-cockpit airplanes or behind the rear cockpit; once airborne, the safety pilot would duck

down or hide behind a large headrest, and the actors would turn on the cameras and pilot the planes. Arlen had some flying experience; Rogers, none. They were given the best flight instructors available, but only received a few hours’ training, Rogers remembered, “I was the photographer, the director, the actor, everything…for five hundred feet.” Arlen fared quite well with his flying, but Rogers, Wellman recalled, “was a tough son of a bitch. He hated flying, which made him deathly sick. He logged over ninety-eight hours in the picture and every time he came down, he vomited. That’s a man with guts. I love him.” Paramount did not understand either the waste or Wellman’s passion for realism. They were also afraid that he was going to kill the stars.

Wellman—WINGS—10

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2012 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXV: Sept 4 M Fritz Lang 1931

Sept 11 THE FOUR FEATHERS Zoltán Korda 1939 Sept 18 CHILDREN OF PARADISE Marcel Carné 1945

Oct 2 KISS ME DEADLY Robert Aldrich 1955 Oct 9 LONELY ARE THE BRAVE David Miller 1962

Oct 16 FAIL-SAFE Sidney Lumet 1964 Oct 23 THE STUNT MAN Richard Rush 1980 Oct 30 COME AND SEE Elem Klimov 1985

Nov 6 GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES Isao Takahata 1988 Nov 13 MAGNOLIA Paul Thomas Anderson 1999

Nov 20 RUSSIAN ARK Alexander Sokurov 2002 Nov 27 WHITE MATERIAL Claire Denis 2009 Dec 4 A SEPARATION Asghar Farhadi 2011

CONTACTS: ...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu

…email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu ...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com

...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com ....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center and State University of New York at Buffalo

with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News