IMDb plot summary: Brothers Monte and Ray leave Oxford to join the Royal Flying Corps. Ray loves Helen; Helen enjoys an affair with Monte; before they leave on their mission over Germany they find her in still another man's arms.
Directed by Howard Hughes. Starring Ben Lyon, James Hall, and Jean Harlow.
Hell's Angels is a 1930 war epic following two English brothers going to fight in the World War. They could not be more different -- Roy is conscientious and careful, while Monte is reckless and hedonistic. Monte's behavior consistently gets him in trouble, with Roy having to clean up after him. Usually I find epic-length movies to be unnecessarily long, rarely with a justified runtime, but I really appreciated all the different ways we saw our protagonists interact with each other and the world around them. It really helped flesh them out in a way that made the film's ending sit a lot more powerfully. There's also some very creative early use of color here. While most of the film is in black-and-white, there are some dramatically tinted battle scenes as well as a full-color scene at an extravagant party that really use their deliberate color choice to convey a sense of mood and tone. Even the battle scenes here, which I would usually be bored by, are used effectively to communicate our protagonists' stories, and it all works together really well. Definitely one I'd recommend checking out.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Hell's Angels > Camp
Hell's Angels < The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Hell's Angels > Something to Sing About
Hell's Angels < The Producers (2005)
Hell's Angels < Spellbound (2002)
Hell's Angels < Summer Stock
Hell's Angels > Family Business
Hell's Angels < Idiocracy
Hell's Angels > Manhunter
Hell's Angels > Hamlet (1990)
Hell's Angels > The Ref
Final spot: #1338 out of 3681, or 64%. That feels too low.
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