Amoeba Music

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.

Special Features:

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• 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
• An essay by critic Michael Sragow