The Black Angel (1946)

[moira finnie]

After coming across this title in a post by MikeBSG, I ordered this from Netflix and I was not disappointed. While not breaking new ground, the film focuses on its sometimes haunting little story (based on a story by masterful noir writer, Cornell Woolrich). The last directorial stint of the sometimes stylish journeyman Roy William Neill, (who was responsible for some of the better Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone), this Universal picture had a good cast headed by the vastly underrated Dan Duryea in a sympathetic role for once, albeit with a twist that most 8 year olds will spot 15 minutes into the film. In some ways it's as though the lads at Universal got together a checklist:

Marginal Character types of all stripes, including:
Caring desk clerk
Creepy janitor
Blowsy bottle-blonde barfly
Tough but unimaginative enforcer
Skeptical cops
Bored, indifferent medicos
Mysterious international sort
Innocent blonde
Incendiary blonde
Hapless male victim of blondes
Brooding hero

Oodles of Atmospheric moodiness, including:
Seedy milieus
Most action confined to dim, dark night or glossy interiors at night
Brooding sense of injustice
Inexorable fate
Fatalistic, doomed love
Excellent dream sequence
Excellent binge montage depicting descent into lower depths
Bluesy music

The really perfectly cast actors are rounded out by a wonderful turn by Peter Lorre as a nightclub owner, Broderick Crawford as a decent police detective with a perfunctory sense of justice, Wallace Ford doing his patented decent but weak schlemiel number, Hobart Cavanaugh enjoying himself as a venal, uncaring janitor, a weathered looking bartender played by Ben Bard, and a rather bland June Vincent as the loyal wife of a convicted murderer. Ms. Vincent bore an uncanny blonde resemblance physically and in her semi-somnambulent acting style to Joan Caulfield and Jean Wallace--who were all very appealing looking, but somewhat oddly expressionless in a goddess-like way at times.

Speaking of the goddess-like, the film is enlivened considerably by the brief moments when the strikingly beautiful and quite carnivorous-looking Constance Dowling is on screen. Ms. Dowling, whose real life beaus included Elia Kazan, numerous French intellectuals of the exisentialist movement, and Italian poet Cesare Pavese, who killed himself over her, is a remarkable creature. Too bad she didn't make more American films in her time. Interestingly, one of Pavese's last poems, written about Dowling, is entitled "Death will Come and (She) Will Have Your Eyes". You can see how one would get that idea after seeing her in this movie.

Constance Dowling as she appeared in The Black Angel.

[Dewey1960]

BLACK ANGEL is a vastly underrated noir film, even by those who should know better. Ostensibly it is about a young woman's efforts to find the murderer of a nightclub singer and prove her accused, philandering husband's innocence. But the movie is really about alcoholism, a man's temporary escape from it, and his ultimate relapse into addiction. At its center is a character so enveloped by melancholy (Duryea) it seems inevitable that his life would be subverted by alcohol. After the morbid reasons for his condition are revealed, it becomes difficult to watch and accept the contrived outcome of the movie. The real pain is in the hideous recognition of guilt and shame that lies at the heart of drunkenness.
Woolrich (author of the novel) was an acloholic burdened by insurmountable obsessions and sexual frustration. Through his restrictive lifestyle, he attempted to conceal his real nature not only from himself, but from his possessive mother with whom he lived in one hotel room until her death. In his work, Woolrich may have been equating murder with homosexuality. The harboring of his own sexual secrets might not differ from a delusional killer's efforts to conceal his murderous impulses. The fact that Woolrich frequently associated sex with murder in his stories might lead one to speculate that the author found sexual gratification in the graphic depiction of killing. This is an authentic noir syndrome.
By creating a hallucinatory world of despair, BLACK ANGEL becomes an essential film noir. Its style mirrors the turmoil within its characters.

[moira finnie]

Hi Dewey,
Your passionate assessment of this fine movie makes me wonder if you have read Francis Nevins' marvelous bio of the author Cornell Woolrich, "First You Dream, Then You Die". I believe that it is still available--at least in used editions. It provides an excellent overview of this talented man's troubled life.

Wouldn't it be a blast to have a festival of movies based on the work of Cornell Woolrich? Of course, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes would be one to include, though I'd also love to see the dreamlike No Man of Her Own (1950) with Barbara Stanwyck under Mitchell Leisen's sensitive direction as well as Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black with Jeanne Moreau at her considerable peak. Another Truffaut film, Mississippi Mermaid, also has a great deal to offer upon repeated viewing as well. Given your background working in a film repertory house, I wonder if you've already overseen such an actual film celebration of this author's seminal work?

Thanks for replying to my post. I share your respect for the film and Dan Duryea's lovely performance, though I hope that you don't mind that I approached it from a loving, but somewhat flippant perspective, as is my droll nature.

[Dewey1960]

Hi Moira -
Yes, I have read Nevins' rather daunting biography of Cornell Woolrich and it is indeed a revelation. Seldom has a writer commanded so little literary respect and, at the same time, so much morbid attention.

I've read most of Woolrich's novels and, frankly, they are a chore. Much of his writing is weighted down by alcoholic rambling and long, incoherent passages of purple prose. But they are strangely compelling nonetheless. Clearly, though, they were born for cinematic interpretation.

To that list of films for a Woolrich festival, I would add Siodmak's PHANTOM LADY (1944), Jacques Tourneur & Val Lewton's THE LEOPARD MAN (1943; based on the novel "Black Alibi"), Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW (1954), the 1942 "B" picture STREET OF CHANCE with Burgess Meredith, FEAR IN THE NIGHT (1947) and its 1956 remake NIGHTMARE (with Kevin McCarthy and Edward G. Robinson) as well as the poverty row Monogram films I WOULDN'T BE IN YOUR SHOES (1948) and THE GUILTY (1947). I know I'm leaving out a few, but it's late and I'm starting to fade. PHANTOM LADY, as many enthusiasts know, has a plot that is very similar to BLACK ANGEL and, because of Siodmak's florid direction is held in higher regard. Thematically, however, BLACK ANGEL in my opinion is a far superior film. (And yes, I can happily say that I have screened these films theatrically over the past fifteen years or so; last year I used BLACK ANGEL in a course in film noir that I teach.)

Moira, thanks for introducing this thread about BLACK ANGEL. It really is an important film in the noir canon. And no, I wasn't the least bit put off by your assessment of it. As usual, your observations are laced with wit and sublime intelligence.

[MikeBSG]

In a lot of ways, "Black Angel" reminds me of "Phantom Lady" in terms of its plot: a woman puts on a masquerade to solve a murder that her beloved/husband is accused of.

Woolrich also wrote the novel, "Black Alibi," that eventually became Val Lewton's "The Leopard Man."

He wrote a series of novels with the word "Black" in the title. Bride Wore Black, Rendezvous in Black, Black Curtain, Black Alibi, Black Angel.

[dfordoom]

Wouldn't it be a blast to have a festival of movies based on the work of Cornell Woolrich? O

Or a DVD boxed set.