One of Howard Hawks' several masterpieces and again an example of the Hollywood studio system at its zenith with every aspect of the production as perfect as pictures can get. As was so often the case Hawks directs the film as if he hadn't been on set at all, as if everything we are seeing had simply evolved naturally. A sublime cast, (Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Thomas Mitchell, Rita Heyworth, Allyn Joslyn, Sig Ruman), working from a sublime screenplay by Jules Furthman make it seem effortless just as Lionel Bank's art direction and Joseph Walker's brilliant cinematography create a real place out of the South American port of Barranca and all in the studio.
The story concerns a group of hotshot flyers whose job it is to deliver the mail by flying it out over some very treacherous mountain terrain and when you throw some Hawksian women into the mix things can get pretty hot on the ground, too. Arthur is the archetypal Hawksian female and this might just be her best performance though you can't really fault any of the cast. Some of the lines, "Calling Barranca" and "Who's Joe" have passed into movie folklore.
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