Highly Overrated But Still Good

Good concept, poorly executed.

An action-packed slog

Blistering performances.

Long before "The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer" and "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse", Myrna Loy and Cary Grant were paired only once together, in this somewhat unbelievable aerial drama about a cocky thrill pilot (Grant) who suddenly looses his eyesight in a freak accident and with the help of fellow pilot Loy and pal Roscoe Karns, ends up back in the cockpit. Loy, playing a variation of Amelia Earhart and Katharine Hepburn's "Christopher Strong", tries to break a transit record, and in the climactic sequence, is believed missing. The blind Grant sets out to find her, leading to one of the most ridiculous abuses of reality on film.Best known for comedy, the two have proved themselves in dramatic roles, so that is not the issue here. What is obvious is that they are playing a story that needs far more reality than the script delivered, so the result is as absurd as anything you've seen on film. Grant starts off as rather obnoxious; In fact, there's nothing in his character to suggest, other than his looks, that Loy would fall in love with him. But once blind, he looses all hope, even initially rejecting the seeing eye dog Loy and Karns bring him. This leads to sequences of obvious "cuteness", and how can you not love this Rin-Tin-Tin pooch. But the star power of the leads and the dog aside, I have to mark this one as a disappointment that fails even in spite of some thrilling flight scenes and bits of amusing dialog.

Cary Grant and Myrna Loy star in "Wings in the Dark," a 1935 film. It's obvious with films like Christopher Strong and others that with Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart around, aviation was a huge topic. In this film, Grant and Loy play aviators Ken Gordon and Sheila Mason - she does the stunt circuit. After Gordon is wounded in an accident in his workshop, he goes blind, and Sheila is there to help him. Gordon wants to continue his work, and is interested in perfecting the plane instruments so that even a blind man could fly a plane, that is, fly in terrible fog or other weather conditions.Gordon doesn't realize it, but Sheila is funding his work by telling him that articles he's written have been sold. When his plane is taken away due to lack of payments, she agrees to fly a plane from New York to Moscow so she can collect $25,000. It isn't the smooth flight she anticipated.This is a pretty good film with both actors turning in good performances. Grant gets to show his dramatic flair - the man could really do anything. Now that I've seen so many of his early films, I'm convinced he had a nose job - his nose is definitely longer early on. Nevertheless he was always extremely handsome.Loy and Grant went on to make other films together, and this early one isn't mentioned much. It doesn't compare to Mr. Blandings or the Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer, but the stars raise it up a level.

Producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr. borrowed Myrna Loy from MGM for a loan out film at Paramount and teamed her for the first time with Cary Grant who was under contract there. This must have been a courtship film of sorts because the following year Hornblow married Myrna Loy. I'm betting that top billing went to Loy because of Louis B. Mayer as a condition of the loan out and because Hornblow was courting her hot and heavy.In the Forties Cary and Myrna did The Bachelor And The Bobby Soxer and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, both films more of the usual sort of material for both of them. Wings In The Dark is a drama about an Amelia Earhart type aviatrix and an aeronautical inventor who find love and happiness. But it's a bumpy road to all that.Grant is a cynical fellow who despises Loy as a circus stunt flier with no feel for the progress of aviation. Myrna properly puts him in his place when she points out that due to the status of women at the time, her kind of flying is all that's open to her and in doing what she does she is showing her sex as capable as the male. A very far reaching treatise on feminism for its time.During an accident Cary goes blind and he's not one to take charity. But as it were he happened to be working on developing instrument flying through thick clouds and fog and in the end he gives his machine the ultimate test.Wings In The Dark is dated because aviation has made light years more progress than when this film was made. And it does pale beside the two classic screen comedies that Grant and Loy later did. Still it does offer an interesting glimpse of both stars in their earlier year and for Grant an unusual bit of casting.

A rather preposterous melodrama on the surface, WINGS IN THE DARK manages to retain a surprising amount of credibility due to solid direction and convincing performances. The far-fetched storyline of a recently blinded pilot Ken Gordon (Cary Grant) relying on newly-created aviation software to guide fellow pilot and girlfriend Sheila Mason (Myrna Loy) through deadly fog is brimming full with gaping plot holes and ham-fisted dialogue, which typically spell serious trouble for most productions. However, the film is salvaged, and even made thoroughly enjoyable, by the compelling, believable performances of Loy and Grant and director James Flood's brisk direction, which moves the picture along at a steady rate and helps to minimize much of the script's potential schmaltz. The combined efforts of Loy, Grant, and Flood make an entertaining and sometimes compelling little aviation drama out of what could have been a total disaster, which is quite an amazing feat on each individual's part!