Howard Hawks

Only Angels Have Wings

Only Angels Have Wings

Electrified by crackling dialogue and visual craftsmanship of the great Howard Hawks, Only Angels Have Wings stars Jean Arthur as a traveling entertainer who gets more than she bargained for during a stopover in a South American port town. There she meets a handsome and aloof daredevil pilot, played by Cary Grant, who runs an airmail company, staring down death while servicing towns in treacherous mountain terrain. Both attracted to and repelled by his romantic sense of danger, she decides to stay on, despite his protestations. This masterful and mysterious adventure, featuring Oscar-nominated special effects, high-wire aerial photography, and Rita Hayworth in a small but breakout role, explores Hawks’s recurring themes of masculine codes and the strong-willed women who question them.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1939
  • 121 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • English
  • Spine #806

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between filmmakers Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich
  • New interview with film critic David Thomson
  • Howard Hawks and His Aviation Movies, a new program featuring film scholars Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
  • Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1939, starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, Richard Barthelmess, and Thomas Mitchell, and hosted by filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Sragow

    New cover by Francesco Francavilla

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio excerpts from a 1972 conversation between filmmakers Howard Hawks and Peter Bogdanovich
  • New interview with film critic David Thomson
  • Howard Hawks and His Aviation Movies, a new program featuring film scholars Craig Barron and Ben Burtt
  • Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1939, starring Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, Richard Barthelmess, and Thomas Mitchell, and hosted by filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Sragow

    New cover by Francesco Francavilla
Only Angels Have Wings
Cast
Cary Grant
Geoff Carter
Jean Arthur
Bonnie Lee
Richard Barthelmess
Bat MacPherson
Rita Hayworth
Judy MacPherson
Thomas Mitchell
Kid Dabb
Allyn Joslyn
Les Peters
Sig Rumann
Dutchy
Victor Kilian
Sparks
John Carroll
Gent Shelton
Donald Barry
Tex
Noah Beery Jr.
Joe Souther
Manuel Álvarez Maciste
The singer
Milissa Sierra
Lily
Lucio Villegas
The doctor
Pat Flaherty
Mike
Pedro Regas
Pancho
Pat West
Baldy
Credits
Director
Howard Hawks
Screenplay by
Jules Furthman
Produced by
Howard Hawks
Cinematography
Joseph Walker
Aerial photography
Elmer Dyer
Editor
Viola Lawrence
Art direction
Lionel Banks
Special effects
Roy Davidson
Technical adviser/Chief pilot
Paul Mantz
Costume design
Robert Kalloch
Makeup
Robert J. Schiffer
Music
Dimitri Tiomkin
Musical director
Morris Stoloff

Current

The Special Effects of Only Angels Have Wings
The Special Effects of Only Angels Have Wings
Before he became one of cinema’s greatest directors, Howard Hawks was a pilot for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War I. And in the years following the war, Hawks took advantage of his flying expertise and the public’s fascination with aviat…
Hooked on Film: David Thomson on Howard Hawks’s Red River
Hooked on Film: David Thomson on Howard Hawks’s Red River
For a program on our forthcoming release of Howard Hawks’s 1939 romantic adventure drama Only Angels Have Wings, we sat down for an interview with film critic and historian David Thomson. In our conversation with him, Thomson shared his formative e…
Only Angels Have Wings: Hawks’s Genius Takes Flight
Only Angels Have Wings: Hawks’s Genius Takes Flight

Howard Hawks’s 1939 aviation classic Only Angels Have Wings is an exemplar of the auteurist Hollywood entertainer’s capability to fuse “a personal existential statement and a delightful piece of showmanship.”

By Michael Sragow

Rita Hayworth’s Artful Indecency
Rita Hayworth’s Artful Indecency

Behind her carefully crafted bombshell persona, the great Hollywood actor found ingenious ways of signaling how aware she was of the artifice of her own image.

By ​Pamela Hutchinson

Movie-Crazy: A Conversation with Allan Arkush
Movie-Crazy: A Conversation with Allan Arkush
In 1970, legendary filmmaker Roger Corman founded New World Pictures, an independent studio that produced and distributed everything from B-movies and exploitation films to acclaimed foreign art-house fare by Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, and…

By Hillary Weston

Criterion’s British Invasion
Criterion’s British Invasion

In partnership with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, select Criterion titles are now available for purchase on Blu-ray in the United Kingdom, both in stores and online.

New UK Releases for April 2016
New UK Releases for April 2016
We’re thrilled to announce that the Criterion Collection has begun releasing a selection of titles in the United Kingdom. We’re kicking off our UK launch today with six incredible films from the collection, and further releases will follow each m…