The New Picture

I Wanted Wings (Paramount] takes a trio of characters native to any military movie--the unreconstructed moneybags with a string of polo ponies (Ray Milland), the timid misfit (William Holden), the carefree clown (Wayne Morris)--and hurries them through the five-month training course at Randolph and Kelly Fields in Texas. Along with the studious documentation of a trainee's tribulations are funny and tense shots of the first shaky hours in the air, spectacular panoramas of scores of planes in formation, a gasp-making exhibition of hedgehopping over the Texas countryside. And after graduation there is a mock night air raid on Los Angeles photographed both from the ground, where the stabbing searchlights may remind Californians of a market opening, and the inside of a B-17 (Flying Fortress) bomber, where cinemaudiences can get a close-up of destruction in the making.

When it sticks to flying, I Wanted Wings offers educational and tingling entertainment along with some of the cinema's best aviation photography. Elsewhere, Paramount's picture of life in the air force resembles a mixture of West Point and Minsky's.

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