HELL’S ANGELS

US, 1930, 127 minutes, Black and white.
Ben Lyon, James Hall, Jean Harlow.
Directed by Howard Hughes.

Hell’s Angels is a World War One action adventure, an air film, showing the passion of Howard Hughes, the director, for aviation.

The film focuses on two brothers who are at Oxford when the war breaks out. They are very different. One is a womaniser (having an affair with his brother’s girlfriend), as well as having some cowardice. The other brother is a stronger personality, trying to protect his brother. The two of them have to go on a mission to destroy a German munitions facility. However, they are pursued by the German planes. The film has a back-story about their visit to Germany before the war, visiting a student, Karl, who was at Oxford. Karl goes back to Germany – but in his raid on London from a Zeppelin, the bombs are made to fall in the water rather than on the city.

The film stars two popular actors of the period, Ben Lyon who was to continue acting for several decades, and James Hall who died in 1940. However, the film was remembered for Jean Harlow’s starring role. For the next six or seven years she would be a star at MGM, appearing often with Clark Gable as in Red Dust. Two films were made about her life and career in the 1960s, one with Carol Lynley, the other with Carroll Baker.

However, the main interest is in Howard Hughes’s direction. The only other film he directed was The Outlaw with his protégé Jane Russell, in 1943 – although release was delayed for censorship reasons until 1948. However, he produced a number of films including The Front Page and Scarface in the 1930s and a number of popular films in the 1950s.

The background to the making of Hell’s Angels as well as the re-enactment of scenes, especially the flying, are to be seen in Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator, with Leonardo DiCaprio? as Howard Hughes.

1. The value of this film, its impact in its time, now? Tone of the title and themes?

2. The retrospect of Howard Hughes and his career, Jean Harlow?

3. The film as an example of film-making at the beginning of the talkie era? Silent film techniques, camera positions, episodic nature? Captions? Styles of acting?

4. A 1930s view of World War I, the British, their attitude and participation in the war? The Germans? (Villains in 1930)

5. The episodic structure of the film and audience interest and involvement? The brief sequences and the impact of this kind of style? Continuity, identification?

6. The impact and enjoyment of the human story: the moralizing tone in the presentation of characters, the introduction? Roy and what he represented - the upright unimaginative Englishman, righteous yet tempted to dishonour, finally overcoming temptation and being heroic? Monty, the weaker younger brother? Helen and her position in society, her wanting to live lift to the full, the perennial tramp? Lady Randolph and the sketching-in of London society, 1914? The mutual involvements, romance, triangle, disappointment and disillusionment? Comedy?

7. The portrait of the war? the introduction to the 1914 situation, the realistic treatment of war, the visually poetic treatment of war? especially with the zeppelin and von Krantz, on air formation? The spirit of involvement in World War I, enlisting, training? Comic aspects?

8. The length given to the zeppelin episode? Its impact, visual presentation of the zeppelin and its menace, mechanism? Kurt and his presence? His introduction in the human story, going back to Germany, his being the observer, his decisions to let the bombs drop in the Thames, his telling lies to his commander, the pathos of the decision about his death? The personality of the zeppelin commander, the officers? The use of German with captions? How villainous were the Germans meant to be? Too villainous? Did the film poke fun at them? The decision for lightening the zeppelin, the importance of the soldiers jumping off? The contrast with the planes? The planes pursuing the zeppelin and the suspense and drama? Monty and Roy crash landing? The plane going in and exploding the zeppelin and its fall? How accurate an impression of the impact of World War I?

9. The transition to France and the brief indication of the patrols, the danger? The British in France, morale, the clubs?

10. The theme of men at war, alone, comradeship, the meal table and Monty's outburst against the war? Women? The prostitutes, Helen and her work in the canteen and the equivalent of the prostitute? Drunkenness, the temptation to give up? The appeal to patriotism? The sketchy outlining of these themes but their impact?

11. The long time given to the brothers' mission? The goal, their setting out after temptation and decision not to go? Their achievement and the visuals of the explosion of the ammunition depot? The irony of von Krantz’s fleet flying above the brothers? The visual portraits of flying? The Germans, the British, the brothers' plane trying to get away? The detailed attention to warfare, the dog fights and the visual composition of these?

12. The brothers' crash, their capture, interrogation, the crisis and their fear? Roy’s decision and the pathos of Monty's death? The off-screen death of Roy? 1930s heroic patriotism?

13. The film indicating themes and styles of the cinema in 1930, attitudes to war, critique of var? The irony of World War II yet to come? Human issues, heroism, values?