Wings

The first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture — and it earned it. William Wellman's World War I aviation epic follows two young men, one wealthy, one working-class, both in love with the same woman, who become fighter pilots on the Western Front and forge a bond that the war will test in the most devastating way imaginable. The aerial combat sequences are among the most astonishing ever filmed: real planes, real dogfights, cameras mounted on the aircraft themselves, and a realism so visceral that several pilots were seriously injured during production. Clara Bow lights up every scene she's in as the girl next door, and the battle of Saint-Mihiel sequence — a massive ground assault filmed from above — anticipates Saving Private Ryan by seventy years. A cornerstone of American cinema and an unforgettable spectacle.