So glad you enjoyed it - and I was confident that you would!

That part with Jack returning the good-luck charm and medal to David's mother is definitely a tearjerker moment. My mom (who died five years ago today), this was one of the final movies we ever watched together, and it was our first time apiece for this film. I'll always remember that she gasped and cried out when that part happened (as not only is it powerful in its own right, but also my eldest brother had died about 2-1/2 years earlier, and Mom continued to grieve the loss, therefore that movie moment hit close to home). So that particular moment, both in the film and during the first viewing of it, is extremely memorable, and special, to me.

Yes: We need to get you watching more Silent films, Aus. There are so many truly wonderful ones. And they - the "keeper" ones - do definitely hold up beautifully to modern-day viewing, between interesting, appealing, and well-told memorable stories, a timelessness, and very relatable characters and situations, plus excellent performances and terrific high production values.

Could you believe the incredible aerial stunts in this movie?! And they all were 100% the real deal - no CGI or on-set simulations: The real actors were sent up in real planes, and the stunts were performed with them acting right there truly up in the sky experiencing those moments! Everything that looked death-defying and dangerous - it actually was so. This movie benefited from massive cooperative assistance by the US Government, which provided actual planes, acreage for filming, redevelopment of that acreage to look like real battlefield landscape, and troops (but not stunt pilots, as actual pilots were considered too invaluable of a commodity to risk) to do the land-warfare portrayals.

A neat thing about this movie is that it's from during the decade following the end of the first World War, therefore everything from back then was still prime in everyone's memories, and so many survivors of the battlefields comprised a lot of "walking wounded" population. This film would have definitely hit extremely close to home for a great many people back then, who would absolutely have related to the storylines.

By the way, I don't know whether you saw any available extras that exist for accompanying the beautiful restoration of this movie that you viewed. If you didn't, a few interesting bits of trivia: You know the woman holding the baby, when David's plane crashes into the side of the building? Well that was director William Wellman's wife at the time, and their own baby. Also the orchestral score you heard during the restoration, that's the actual music that was composed to be performed by live orchestras in theatres where this movie played back in 1927. That original score was edited, partially re-orchestrated, and then newly performed and recorded for accompanying the restoration's release. (The score of course was very precisely edited and performed to correspond, every single second, with the timing of scenes and the action.) Definitely impressive, powerful, and spot-on.

Just think - this movie is from NINETY years ago - nearly a full century ago - and it's that good, that "modern" feeling, and so technically very advanced - definitely not boring, primitive, or clunky. A lot of people have a preconception of what Silents are like, based on a stereotype we're all familiar with of like the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin or whatever, or lots of over-the-top melodrama and extreme over-acting, or women fainting with arm across forehead, or unnaturally fast footage. That's all an earlier vintage of Silents, rather than what Hollywood was producing during most of the '20s. Silents of the '20s are, for the most part, technically and artistically wonderfully produced and very polished and advanced, and feature either naturalistic acting or most of the way naturalistic acting. (Sometimes you do get some very stagy acting, but it all depends on the film and the particular performer.) Silents are a wonderful, fascinating, and appealing time capsule of life in a different time and world.

You're right, I only fleetingly watched the Keystone Cops and Charlie Chaplin, wasn't impressed with either. They definitely would have influenced me on silent movies.

I'm not a fan of war movies. This one really brought home (to me) the amount of casualties. When you read numbers of how many died in WW1 , it really doesn't register. Showing the amount of foot soldiers really made me think of how many young men must have died and the effects on family etc.

Yes doing their own stunt work, very, very brave and which was amazing btw. Especially the close up shots of the pilots. How did they do it? Today's actors have got it good. Get paid $millions just for acting, if you get my drift.

My son is a silent movie fan too. I'll have to get a conversation going with him on what to watch. I know he has quite a collection. One movie he finally talked me into watching was Metropolis, and really didn't like that much.

Buddy Rogers ("Jack" in the film) was I believe 23 when this movie was made, never had been up in a plane before, and is said to have been utterly terrified and to have thrown up after every session that required him to be up for filming, though remained entirely "game" throughout it all, and kept doing whatever he was instructed. Meanwhile, Richard Arlen ("David") was I believe, during actual WWI, a pilot serving with the Canadian Air Force. He was older, and comfortable being up in a plane.

How those close-up segments were filmed was using planes with double cockpits, so that actually the shown actors in close-up were seated directly behind the actual pilot, so needed to be filmed (using I believe automatic cameras) reacting to certain type specific "moments" they had rehearsed for on the ground. So, although they weren't their own selves truly flying the planes, they were up there actually flying (as passenger actually) in open-cockpit planes, fully exposed to all the elements, and completely "in the moment." I've seen, on the DVD's bonus features making-of documentary, that whichever actor concerned would, before each individual new shot, press the button on the camera, hold up however many fingers, to signal this would be whichever # new take, then would do whatever action/reaction they had rehearsed for (the plane's types of movements, at the time, coordinated with the actual pilot, of course, so that the right sort of background activity would be showing). So that achieved all the needed looks and reactions, of fear, chase, horror, getting shot, etc. Pretty neat system - and entirely convincing visual end result on film!

I, too, am not normally into war movies, though find myself very interested in this type film that's more about the story and the characters involved than about the blood and guts or strategy aspect of things. Also WWI specifically, and its particular era and individual stories, has long tremendously interested me.

As for Metropolis, that's a movie I, too, never really much warmed to - until the current 146 minutes deluxe restoration, that finally restored virtually all of the long-missing footage and returned the proper power and balance of the story and overall movie. That said, it's admittedly not a movie that will be for everyone.

I see, yet again, confirmation that we share the same sort of tastes, as I, too, never have cared for or been impressed by the Keystone Cops or Charlie Chaplin.

I'd love to know how much those actors and camera men got paid. Not a heck of a lot I don't think. Definitely needed danger money..

Yeah Keystone Cops etc wasn't funny to me at all. Neither were Laurel and Hardy, Three Stooges and whoever.

I learned some interesting trivia today, while working up TMDb bios for the overview pages of this movie's male co-stars Richard Arlen and Charles "Buddy" Rogers:

Richard Arlen was the husband, for nearly twenty years (the couple eventually divorced), of Jobyna Ralston, who appears as his (and character Jack's) love interest, Sylvia, in Wings. Arlen and Ralston wed in early 1927, a few months before the release of this movie.

Ten years later, in 1937, Buddy Rogers became the third husband of Silent screen star Mary Pickford. That marriage apparently was a success, as the couple remained together for 42 years, until her death.

It's nice to see some Hollywood marriages last. Mary Pickford, third time lucky

Hey genplant, do you run an old movie page on facebook?

Just posting on here is the full extent of my movies posting anywhere.

Most old movies I post about on TMDb, I don't think hardly anyone (if anyone) here's seen, and probably also haven't even heard of, as typically threads I create about very old (80+ years) movies and old-time actors/actresses get no responses.