Frank Capra | Flight / 1929

i’m funny that way

by Douglas Messerli

 

Frank Capra and Howard J. Green (screenplay, based on a story by Ralph Graves), Frank Capra (director) Flight / 1929

 

      With all the coincidence and gossip regarding Hill’s and Capra’s works, it is indeed a bit difficult to know where to start in discussing Capra’s 1929 movie. Perhaps it is best to begin with how it quite radically differs from Wead’s story The Flying Feet.

       Flight begins, strangely with a very different kind of flight in motion, as “Lefty” Phelps, a college student football benchwarmer finally gets a chance to enter the game in the last few moments of a tied 0 to 0 faceoff. Simply hoping to hype up the action, the coach puts in Lefty, who is so excited he can hardly wait to run onto the field before the coach explains his decision.

      After the first hike, Phelps gains several yards, but upon the second time he gets the ball in his hands, and like football player Roy Riegels in the 1929 Rose Bowl game, he is tackled by his own players after mistakenly running to his own goal line and winning the game for the other team.

      For Lefty, the embarrassment—as the story gets carried in all the national newspapers and sports enthusiasts around the country seem unable to talk about anything else—is so difficult to bear that we see him hiding out from a news boy who has recognized him in a men’s bathroom.

      There he meets, suggestively, Panama Williams, who talking to another friend insinuates that the football player probably ran into the wrong direction purposely to get the money from a bribe. Finally fed up with the lies and taunts, Lefty dares Panama to a fight. Panama, dressed in his Marine uniform, suddenly realizing that he’s been talking to the man himself, apologizes and treats him decently, sympathizing with his hurt and anger—the first person who has shown any kindness to Lefty since the game.

      By the time Lefty is ready to leave the men’s room he has decided to join up in Panama’s Marine Air Force to study for pilot training. And when he arrives the San Diego base, he finds Panama will be his flight instructor.

      Not everything, however, goes as he might first expect it. Panama, not recognizing him, rejects his attempts to be friendly and another of his fellow trainees, Corporal Steve Roberts, having discovered Lefty’s history begins razzing and mocking Corporal Phelps.

     Roberts so spooks Lefty that a few weeks later when the men are scheduled for their first solo flights, despite Panama’s assurance to his superiors that Phelps is his best man, finds it impossible to get his plane off the ground, crashing it without even leaving earth—another example of his seeming to do everything in reverse.

      Lefty is hurt and Panama saves him from the burning plane, scorching his own hands in the process. While confined for several weeks in the hospital under the care of Nurse Elinor Murray (Lila Lee), who less loquacious Panama has long attempted to tell how much he loves her. During his hospital care, both unaware of Panama’s sentiments, Lefty and Elinor fall in love.

     Because of his failure to even get his plane to lift off, Lefty is washed out of Pilot Training, becoming mechanic for Panama. But despite the others’ rejection, Panama stays true to his friend in a manner that is fairly inexplicable given his tough man surface. And when the pilots are ordered to prepare to fly down to Nicaragua—to participate in the battle with Sandinista rebels based on the Battle of Ocotal on July 16, 1927—Panama, without telling the despondent Lefty, that he has convinced his superiors to take along Lefty as his mechanic (the role incidentally Spencer Tracy plays to Clark Gable in Test Pilot). Obviously, when Lefty discovers just how loyal his now close friend has been, he grows even more excited, writing home to his mother about how much Panama means to him, and she writing back to Panama to take care of him and treat him as a much-loved brother.

     Lefty doesn’t quite react in the same way, but clearly those are his sentiments as well, and once they arrive in the exotic setting of the jungle fight, the two men, sharing a tent, grow even closer.

Moreover, Lefty’s pattern of doing things in reverse clue us in that what we might expect, a narrative that moves forward with Lefty and Elinor’s romance will take a far different course.

      It begins to take that “other” direction when Panama admits that like Lefty he, too, has a girlfriend, pushing a picture in front of him of Elinor that he has stolen, having been too shy to ask her for one. When Lefty sees who it is, he feels his has no choice but to abandon his own feelings as it he tears up his signed version of the same photo, one that was readily given to Lefty out of her own love for him.

       Elinor and her nurse friends also show up in Nicaragua, surprised by the now cold shoulder she gets from Lefty. Panama, on the other hand, is thrilled by the surprise of her appearing at the battlefront, and the night before their mission tells Lefty that he intends to visit Elinor, tell of her of his love, and propose with a ring he’s been holding onto just for the occasion.

       The frustrated Lefty decides to take in the local bar, off limits to the Marine pilots, especially on the night before the mission. And Panama commands him to remain in the tent and work on some paperwork. Seeing how downhearted his friend is, he moves forward and begins to attempt to lift his spirits, pushing and pulling at him, and finally wrestling him into his own bed in a manner that looks far more like a sexual play than the acts of rowdy military men. That scene alone reveals that these two men can hardly keep their hands off one another.

       Yet, with Elinor, soon after, Panama is almost speechless, trying to pull out the ring but dropping it the ground in the process. Desperately, he searches for it in the dark, while trying to pretend that what he’s looking for his unimportant. But when she spots the ring and picks it up, she suddenly realizes his intentions, handing it back to him as he shuffles speechlessly off.

       By the time he returns to his tent, Panama discovers that despite his orders, Lefty has gone off to the local cantina, and races there before the police patrol can catch up with him. He brings him  back, despite Lefty’s continued protests, by picking him up the drunken marine and hauling him back over his shoulder, the very image of what, if the subject were a female, would be described as a “rape” in the original meaning of the word, “the act of seizing or carrying off by force.”

      After all, what’s a manly and horny bloke to do when the girl he’s after doesn’t warm up to his attentions and is rather plain looking, while actress Lila Lee while he bunks with a handsome gay guy like Ralph Graves? What we begin to realize that in moving in reverse, Lefty, as his nickname suggests, moves away from normalcy; and we in turn are encouraged to read the straight-forward heterosexual romance in reverse.

      Elinor, after hearing that Lefty has taken off for the wiles of the native girls, is so appreciative for Panama for having brought him safely back and put him to his bed that she awards the gunnery sergeant with a kiss on the cheek, only convincing the dumb hunk that she truly does love him.

      Realizing that Lefty is so gifted with words, Panama gets the idea for his friend to stand in for him, somewhat like Cyrano de Bergerac’s employment of Christian in the play that bears the large nosed soldier’s name. Understandably, Lefty refuses, but when he sees how sincerely he has let down his beloved partner, he takes on the task of acting out yet another “reversal,” sacrificing his own love for the wellbeing of his dear friend, a sign of a love far deeper than the romantic kind which the genre places on the surface of this film.

      Lefty does his very best, speaking gloriously of all the qualities which he, in fact, most admires in Panama, in a sense speaking out about his own love of the man in order to convince Elinor that she should love him too. At first confused, but finally able to perceive what is happening, the nurse finally admits her own love for Lefty, and two, now face to face, are lost in a kiss.

      When she tells Panama the truth, that she is in love with Lefty not him, he can only believe that his friend has utterly betrayed him. When they are reassigned due to various tropical illnesses for the day’s adventure, Panama is relieved that he is to serve as gunman and sight guide for the leader of the air force, while Lefty is assigned to Steve Roberts, his taunting nemesis.

      The US force on the ground is losing, being quickly killed off, and run out of weapons when the airplanes arrive to save the day, shooting down hundreds of native rebels and bombing the hell of them in the manner that US adventure films are so brilliant in portraying—this as part of the truly ugly history of the so-called Banana Wars and the dastardly American occupation of the Central American country.

       The lead plane, guided by Panama is about to signal a return to base when he discovers that Roberts and Phelps’ plane is missing; but he has no choice but to order the return. Back at base, most the planes are ordered to return back to the fight after refueling to see if they can find Lefty and Steve’s downed plane. But Panama does not join the group, claiming that he has a fever, but actually still angry over what he sees as his friend’s willful attempt to steal his girl.

       Elinor herself finally pays him a visit, pleading with Panama to search for him—particularly after the other planes return again without any success at locating the two missing airmen. She explains what really happened, that in fact Lefty had eloquently argued for Panama’s love, but it was she who made it clear that she loved only the man who was speaking instead of the man for whom he spoke.

        Finally convinced of Lefty’s continued love, Panama flies off alone to check the territory for himself. In the wilds where they have been shot down, Lefty, despite the man’s previous enmity towards him, has been tenderly caring for Roberts who has been severely hurt in the crash, his back apparently broken. All he can basically do reassure him and brush away the fire ants the studio had brought in without truly realizing how painful their bites were. When Roberts finally dies, Lefty puts his body in the plane, covers it with a shroud of his parachute, and burns it, cremating his body to protect it from the ants and other wild beasts of the jungle.

       Through the rising smoke, Panama locates his position and manages somehow to land safely in the deep bush. But the rebels, also attracted by the smoke, have already arrived nearby and shoot the pilot immediately after he lands the plane.

      Accordingly, Lefty finds that he must now fly the plane with Panama as a wounded passenger, pulling up immediately through the trees into the air, obviously moving forward for once with the treasure of the man we code-readers now realize is the person he truly loves.

       Lefty brings the plane back, and evidently Panama has recovered enough that he encourages him to “show off is flying skills” by buzzing the camp, taking the plane on somersaults and deep dives before safely landing it on what they now realize are only three wheels.

      The film ends, as the surface narrative has predicted, with Lefty now in Panama’s old position of flight instruction, imitating his friend and former teacher almost word for word, while Panama looks lovingly on. Elinor drives up in a new car, now as the wife of Lefty, who jumps in having never driven an auto before, and proceeds to pull away in reverse, he shouting out what has now become an almost a gay declaration, “I’m funny that way,”* while making it symbolically clear that despite Elinor’s presence, he has no intent of driving away and leaving Panama behind.

        It is fascinating that the press and even the early censors which had begun to be established by 1929 did not see through Capra’s and Graves’ coded story, the critics attacking its love scenes as did The New York Times reviewer, “melodramatic flubdub” and “tedious romantic passages,” while praising it whenever the film turned to “scenes of airplanes in formation and flying stunts.”

Even contemporary commentator Astell remains oblivious to the male / male relationship, arguing, “They go off to Nicaragua to fight the rebels, and of course Elinor Murray, the girl they both love, finds her way there too as a nurse, meaning that the whole love triangle gets a chance to come to a head. No, this one is not particularly subtle in the slightest, and in fact gets embarrassingly unsubtle more than a few times.” I guess it was subtle enough, however, along with the other films I mention above to cover the film’s “reversed” message from the US military which handed over locations and machines for the filming this and similar works.

        Seeing and writing Frank Capra’s early works such as this one and The Matinee Idol of the year before which presents a gay member of a theater company fully accepted for who he is by the others, I have had to somewhat revise my previous attitudes toward the director of his movies. Although I still flinch for his devotion to “Capra-corny” tableaus of his Norman Rockwell-like vision of family life, the common man, and the very day “American,” I now realize these were simply crowd-pleasers to convince his audience that his narratives where ordinary and believable when in fact they were almost all fables and myths of outsider males who found it nearly impossible to assimilate themselves into the social fabric of urban America.

     Played by heterosexual favorites such as Gary Cooper and James Stewart, and wrapping themselves in the US flag, their characters presented us, in fact, with adult males who survived better outside of society such as the pixilated Longfellow Deeds who preferred the simple life of a small town bachelor, Jefferson Smith, despite his position in Congress still a Peter Pan-like figure who never outgrew the Boy Rangers he represented; Long John Willoughby who desired to return with his close friend The Coronel to the hobo world from he’d been randomly pulled; and George Bailey, who attempts suicide in order to escape, I would argue, the absolute boredom of his domestic life rather than simply the sudden loss of bank monies mislaid by his equally outsider uncle.

     These men, all unhappy in so-called “normalcy,” are forced to face up to the dark realities of the real everyday man and those who would control and rule over him. If they are represented as heroes at film’s end, we know that they have sacrificed themselves to the cause of heteronormativity, a reality they know full well doesn’t truly exist in the American worlds they have been forced to encounter. My formerly least favorite of his films, Arsenic and Old Lace, has now become one of his most interesting works after recognizing just how gay the theater critic and writer against the institution of marriage, Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) truly was and remains at film’s end even as he finally rushes over to be with his bride in her own bedroom within her minister-father’s house, knowing that entering her domain in a religious world will be denying his entire Brewster past. Suddenly not being a Brewster seems more dangerous than having been a mad murderer.

     At times it almost appears that Capra’s cornball vision of the grand ole flag is a cover for his exploration of the dark secrets of the human heart.

                

* The same line was used in a skit by Johnny Arthur that year in the film The Desert Song, released in April, suggesting, just as in this instance, that the word “funny” meant being queer, in Johnny’s case an excitability brought on by someone putting a hand in the pocket of his pants.

Los Angeles, July 29, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (July 2022).