Howard Hawks’s 1930 classic, his first sound film, stars Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as World War I fighter pilots who discover that friendship and loyalty mean more than the abstract imperatives of duty and honor. As always, Hawks’s characters must face the worst to find the best in themselves; his affirmative dramas are set in the bleakest of worlds. The plot may be tinged with adolescent romantics, but the underlying sentiments are complex and mature.