Flying Pat

A sky-bent symphony of petticoats and propellers, Flying Pat pirouettes on the cusp of the Jazz Age, where Patricia Van Nuys—part daredevil, part champagne bubble—decides the Atlantic is merely a puddle to hop across while the world clutches its pearls. Her spouse Robert, aviator by trade, patron by habit, watches from the hangar as Pat commandeers both horizon and heartstrings, her goggles fogged with ambition, her lipstick unsmudged even after a nose-first rendezvous with terra firma. Enter Captain Endicott, mentor with a cavalier grin, whose lessons in lift and longing send the biplane—and the marriage—into tailspins. A crash, a roadhouse refuge lit by kerosene and suspicion, and suddenly the marital quilt unravels: Robert’s jealousy sparks, Pat bolts for a night train, Endicott materializes in the same carriage like a bad omen in epaulettes, and the film becomes a ricocheting champagne cork of misunderstandings, each pop louder than the last. The plot never lands so much as it glides on the updrafts of social satire, leaving contrails of proto-feminist defiance across a sepia sky.