‘Wings’ DVD, Blu-ray Kick off Paramount Centennial

16 Dec, 2011 By: Chris Tribbey

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The first winner of the Best Picture Academy Award is the last to see a release on disc, and it couldn’t come at a more opportune time.

To kick off the studio’s centennial celebration, Paramount Home Entertainment will release Wings on DVD and Blu-ray Disc Jan. 24. Paramount also last week unveiled a new logo commemorating its 100th anniversary, which can first be seen in the studio’s current theatrical release Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol. The new logo will be used throughout 2012, and thereafter, with the 100th anniversary removed from the logo.

The 1927, black-and-white silent film Wings (the only silent film to ever win the Best Picture Academy Award) helped launch Gary Cooper’s career and follows two small-town American rivals vying for the love of the same girl. They sign up as combat pilots and are shipped off to France to fight in World War I.

The film was widely praised for its aerial dogfights and battle sequences, which were captured using never-before-seen film techniques. Actors in the film actually flew in real planes and used mounted cameras on their own.

“Restoration technology is now advanced enough to address serious condition issues such as printed-in-nitrate deterioration and also restore original tinting and Handschiegl stencil color used for gunfire and flame in the exciting air battle sequences,” said Andrea Kalas, VP of archives at Paramount Studios. “The result is what audiences experienced in 1927.”

The film’s original negative was lost decades ago, and Paramount restored the film for disc using a duplicate negative housed in the studio’s archives. Even so, entire reels of the film were damaged with scratches and printed-in nitrate deterioration. It took digital tools to recreate some of the original tints and effects to bring Wings to disc in proper form. The restoration runs at 24 frames per second, the original’s running speed.

The film’s original score was procured from the Library of Congress and recorded with a full orchestra. Oscar-winning sound designer Ben Burtt (Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and sound engineers from Skywalker Sound added World War I sound effects for the release.

“The score includes overture, intermission and exit music, which is included in the restoration running time,” Kalas added. “A worldwide search was done to locate the best existing elements, and we used the one at Paramount, which turned out to be the best quality of those that were the most comprehensive.”

The Blu-ray ($29.99) will include the new making-of documentary “Wings: Grandeur in the Sky,” as well as “Dogfight,” covering early aeronautics, and “Restoring the Power and Beauty of Wings,” which details the film’s restoration process.

The DVD ($24.99) includes “Wings: Grandeur in the Sky.” 

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