Film Forum

 (1939) At night in Barranca, a fog-bound South American port jammed up against the mountains, pistol-packing and sombreroed Cary Grant, manager for a barely-hanging-on air mail service, goes out on to the field to talk down cocky flyboy Noah Beery, Jr., who’s eager to get back for his dinner with just-passing-through Jean Arthur. But no steaks go uneaten and hair-raising risks are routinely undertaken, as though this were a front line squadron in the Great War, the aerial sequences a combination of now-engagingly quaint miniatures and actual stunt flying by the legendary Paul Mantz, and character after stoic character bearing a Secret: Grant’s adoring sidekick Thomas Mitchell (other 1939 credits: Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Gone with the Wind); mysterious pilot with a nomme d’air Richard Barthelmess (the D.W. Griffith silent star in his last big comeback); and his what’s-she-doing-with-him wife Rita Hayworth in her star-making role. Just about every classic element of 30s flyboy pictures rolled into one, but making a unified personal statement Hawks would return to again and again. Approx. 121 min.  DCP.

A SONY PICTURES REPERTORY RELEASE

Restored by Sony Pictures Entertainment in 4K from the original nitrate picture negative and composite duplicate negative, with audio restoration at Chace Audio by Deluxe in Los Angeles.

Reviews

“THE QUINTESSENCE OF HOLLYWOOD SOPHISTICATION!”
– Time Out New York

“GRANT DELIVERS A ROBUST, CARNAL PERFORMANCE.” 
– Michael Sragow, The New Yorker

"A COMPLETELY ACHIEVED MASTERPIECE.”  
– Robin Wood

“Magnificently directed... What remains in the memory is the setting – drab, dusty, authentic.”
 – Graham Greene

“In the end it’s a film about the guys, and Cary Grant’s Geoff Carter, in gaucho pants, leather jacket, and sombrero, is in no danger of losing his nerve. He’s uproarious in everyway, except how he talks, and that’s where the film is not just ecstatic, precise, and real but modern, absurd, and exhilarating.”
– David Thomson

"MYTHICAL CINEMA AT ITS BEST!  An epic played out in the confined space of the Dutchman’s bar; the more claustrophobic because these men are flyers and need the open sky. If it sounds improbable, it is.”
– Jane Clarke, Time Out (London) 

“THE MOST ROMANTIC FILM OF HAWKS' CAREER! Introduces the latter-day Hawks heroine, [here played by] the tough, wisecracking Jean Arthur…  [the film's] pessimistic mood was the director’s last gesture to the spirit of the thirties reflected in the doomed cinema of Renoir and Carné.” 
– Andrew Sarris