Event

Wings

NY PREMIERE - NEW 35MM PRINT

Live piano score performed and improvised by Ben Model

Wings was the first film ever made that graphically captured the emotional combination of freedom and fear of flying in combat. Director William Wellman drew on his years in an elite flying squadron and pushed the cinematic technology of the day to its limit when he created this film's timeless aerial sequences. The story revolves around two young men, of different classes, who have both fallen for the same young woman before they head off to combat. Richard Arlen and Charles Rogers are well paired as they fight it out over both Clara Bow (the "It" girl) and enemy soil, and Gary Cooper makes a memorable cameo appearance, which launched his career. The emotional current created by the three stars is as intense as the film's special effects, and the result adequately reflects the lasting brutality of war.

USA, 1927, 139 min.

For over two decades Ben Model has served as resident silent film accompanist for The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Ben composes and improvises all his own scores and performs in a style that both evokes the silent era and reflects a contemporary (and younger) audience's appreciation of music and film scoring.