Wings

Michael Paris looks at pioneering 1920s film about war in the air over the Western Front, the passions it aroused and the genre it created.

In the immediate aftermath of the Armistice in 1918, films dealing directly with the Great War almost disappeared from American cinema screens. As one cinema history points out:

Public taste underwent a violent change. Overnight everyone suddenly sickened of the patriotic war pictures which had been turned out wholesale: miles of film had to be scrapped, other pictures taken out of production. There was a general shift ... to the light fare more suited to a victorious mood.

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