In Wings (1927), Clara Bow played Mary Preston, a young woman who loves two young airmen and follows them to France during the First World War. Directed by William A. Wellman, the film is remembered for its ambitious aerial sequences, filmed with real aircraft, and for its place in history as the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Bow’s role is the human centre of that spectacle. Mary is warm, loyal and brave, and Bow gives her a natural, unaffected quality that keeps the love story believable amid the action. Her scenes, including a famous sequence in which she tends a wounded soldier, show a tenderness that balanced her better-known image as a carefree flapper.
Wings remains a landmark of silent cinema, and Bow’s performance is a key reason it still works as drama rather than only as a technical achievement. It shows a star who could carry emotion as easily as comedy, at the very peak of the silent era.