Highly Overrated But Still Good

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Within this movie, we see 50s film making, showing it has little concept of time and era. This is Universal International (at the time, big in television) trying to cash in on the popularity of its earlier hit 'Written on the Wind'. Same stars, same Director, same screen writer, same heavy handedness. The use of the wide CinemaScope screen makes this unconvincing soap opera look even emptier. Film makers needed more than wide screens to get people away from their 50s TVs ~ they needed quality screen writers, with believable stories to tell, not just shows that left you wondering why you took the trouble of going out. With so many movies made using stretched material like this during the 50s and on...it was little wonder theaters were closing in big numbers.The shades of morality are admirable, but even the stars tend to look uncomfortable with their unlikable and unconvincing characters. The end monologue needed a performer of deeper conviction than Hudson. Soap specialist Director Douglas Sirk, had a leaden, turgid script to work with, and fails to inject any pace into the overall slow structure. At least with 'Angels' he's free of the influences of 'Mr Gloss'... producer Ross Hunter, known for his glittery but superficial, chick flicks. Composer Frank Skiner tries hard with his score but he too seems uninspired by the situations (at least Universal gave him a credit on this film, for dozens of earlier works he was un-credited). This film also gives capable Director of Photography Irving Glassberg a chance to get away from talking mules and cowboys ~ here, he turns in some fine flying scenes, but even they fail to lift this one off the ground. This is a pity, because within a year he would be dead at only 54.Viewers who grew up with this style of film --or on 50s and 60s TV-- won't expect much more, and will probably be content with this interpretation of Willam Falkner's novel. Those looking for more, beware. The DVD release is however good quality, with a fine B/W transfer.

In "Tarnished Angels" three men are in love with one woman; each distinctly fails in this love, and yet perhaps more interestingly, each , with possible exception of Roger Schumann, the one certain tarnished angel, comes through too.Laverne Schumann is a woman trapped in her body in a man's world. At 16, she meets Capt. Roger Schumann, the crack flier and war hero (whose image she had seen in a 1918 Liberty Bond Poster), and forgoes her own conventional aspirations in favor of hooking on with his ambition and fame. "Smitten" with her as the Captain may be, and despite his hero's rejection of "flags, confetti" and honor, he remains a warrior when it comes to expressing affection--and his use of Laverne is as natural as flying. Laverne says of the early days "Roger made Jiggs (his mechanic) feel like two cents--me even less." Then when pregnant in 1923, she is subject to the degradation of a dice roll to determine whether Roger or his mechanic should serve as a husband/father. Later, when Roger needs the unattainable Ord plane to compete in a race, she says, in offering herself as procurement, "and who's going to fix Matt Ord?" For Laverne knows her place and knows her worth--she gets 20 bucks for parachuting in a white dress at her hubby's Air Shows. But, underneath, the experience is crushing. She admits to Burt (the reporter), who rescues her from the Ord mission" "No, I mind--each and every nightmare, each and every sin." The plane secured, she says to Burt: "I wish you had not talked me out of it. I would have felt free to walk out on Roger." It can be argued that Jiggs, Roger's crack mechanic, is the closest man to Laverne, closest because his friendship is as convincing as his love. In fact, she reserves her most open and face to face expressions for him. He's quick to stand with her, and remarkably truthful in admitting his failures to do so. When Roger sends his wife to Ord, Jiggs says to him: "I thought you hit rock bottom with that dice game." "What's happened to us?" He turns to Laverne: "What to hell have we done to you?" He includes himself because as he later says to Laverne in her tragic circumstance: "I wish I could tell you I've never done nothing to hurt you but I can't. Me and my lousy pride. I never tried to kill the dirty talk, the dirty lies, not once." And outside the Cafe Mullen, when a grease monkeys baits him: "now you're going to have the luscious Laverne all to yourself," he belts him. But is left totally alone in the night, longing for the man he wanted to kill only a few hours before: "where are you Roger?" (which may explain his timidity in defending Laverne.) Roger Schumann is undoubtedly attached to Laverne. He knew the outcome of the dice roll was as certain as his dependence on Laverne. Unfortunately for his lover, however, attachment is not love, and marriage does not mean the end to his using her for his own ends. This said, he is aware of Laverne's inner and outer strength, and her ability to take on the hardships and risks of the bitterly strange life he had subjected her too. In the Ord affair, he's confident that "she can take care of herself" with his arch enemy. But his avowal of love comes only when faced with a palpable chance of death, and only when his "hunger for flying" is ending--this is when he can he ask Laverne's forgiveness for having used her, and finally utter the words "I love you." Although real and meant, his words may be gaged as questionable, given his pipe dream about an escape to a brand new life after his one final go at the pylons. The "spilling of his crank case oil" (his blood according tot Burt) and his generous flying heroics may have come too late. For his compressed pilot identity, "the man conquered by the flying machine," may have been more of a repudiation of Laverne than he could have imagined.Burt Devlin's love for Laverne is thoughtful and realizable. Burt is a literate crack reporter, with wit, heart, and generosity. He meets the Schumanns through rescuing their son from taunts: "who's you're old man?" And then offers them his place as a crash pad, where he shows up very late to find Laverne immersed in his copy of Willa Cather's "My Antonia." In the press offices the next day he says he spent the night "discussing literature and life with a beautiful half-naked blond." But Burt is perceptive about Roger's use of Laverne: he learns about the dice roll, and witnesses her erotic fall from the sky, and later when he asks her whether Roger suspected an affair between them, she says "Roger's thoughts never come down to earth" to which Burt adds "but they do go into the gutter." But Burt's love for Laverne is contingent on the slow unfolding of their relationship-- he does respect both her and her marriage. But, of course, not enough. For he fails to grasp the bond (of risk, danger, attachment) between Laverne and Roger, and it takes the timely intercession of a Fool to make him realize that his own sense of prowess has trumped his vigilance. But Laverne's angry rejection of him after the accident for having taken advantage of her vulnerable situation seems a bit excessive (perhaps a plot demand). In any case, Laverne soon becomes Burt's Antonia---he asks himself after one of her walkouts "Will I ever see you again, my Antonia?"-- that courageous, independent, vital and now even northwest landscape bound woman, friend--and maybe someday lover. For Burt's airport farewell, in which he lends her his "My Antonia," are: "I want it returned personally."

ROBERT STACK is a barnstorming stunt pilot in the '30s who'd been a hero aviator during the first World War. He's abusive to his loyal wife (DOROTHY MALONE) and his expert mechanic (JACK Carson) and anybody he comes into contact with. For some strange reason, newspaperman ROCK HUDSON is interested enough in this threesome to want to do a news story on them as they prepare to enter various air contests. After briefly encountering them, he even puts them up at his place when they're out of lodgings and soon becomes enmeshed in their lives.But Hudson does deliver a solid monologue at the end when he storms into the newspaper office to give his boss the lowdown on what kind of story he uncovered. It's one of his best moments and he carries it off like a real pro.Stack plays his sullen heel with his usual brash, solemn demeanor. A flabby looking Jack Carson plays the mechanic who's secretly still in love with Stack's wife, Malone. Malone is quietly effective as the wife who suffers and suffers while Stack's mistreatment goes unchecked, except by Hudson. Surprisingly, this is all taken from a William Faulkner novel which must have had stronger characters and situations than are depicted here.It's a stormy emotional drama that makes little sense, directed with a certain amount of style by Douglas Sirk even though it does not use his usual trademark--Technicolor. All the emotional strife makes it a pretty heavy-handed, florid melodrama. Hudson's noble turn at the end makes a new woman of Malone, who decides to accept his offer to return to her roots in Iowa with her little son. None of it seems to ring true, at least to me.Best feature: the flying air scenes are well staged and photographed for maximum effect--but it's hard to care about any of the characters.Trivia note: TROY DONAHUE has a small role as an ill-fated pilot competing against Stack. On the debit side, DOROTHY MALONE's costuming and hair style doesn't suggest the 1930s at all, but the 1950s.

Even though I haven't seen this movie in quite a while, it's ironic I would write this review shortly after viewing "Written On The Wind" for the first time recently. "Ironic" because of the main actors star in both films: Robert Stack, Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone, and both films were directed by Douglas Sirk.Personally, I thought this film was far more interesting than the more well-known WOTW. This was a better story.Dorothy Malone, for one, looked a heckuva lot better in this movie. She had some classic beauty and shows it here more than the trampy role in the other film. I also preferred this film because it had some fascinating and dramatic flying scenes, things I have never seen before on film. Apparently, they had these 1930s air races in which planes few around pylons, almost like a horse race on land. This is the only film I've seen that pictured.Another thing I enjoyed was Hudson's dramatic story at the end of the movie which, at first, seemed ridiculously melodramatic but was said so well that I found in very compelling, and it tied the whole story together. I also appreciated Malone doing the right thing at the end, telling off Hudson for coming on to her, since she was a married woman. This is one of the few films - including those in the 1950s - in which adultery is NOT treated mater-of-factly.