Black Angel

source: Black Angel

Not too many people are going to mourn the passing of Constance Dowling who by all accounts was a two timing blackmailer. John Phillips has drifted into an affair with her and she's making him pay big time. So when she's found strangled and he's nearby suspicion falls on him and homicide cop Broderick Crawford makes the arrest. Phillips is scheduled to die in the gas chamber. That does not sit well with Phillips's wife June Vincent who is a nightclub singer. She's still working to prove her man innocent and she collaborates with Dowling's former husband, composer Dan Duryea who has a drinking problem to rival Ray Milland's in The Lost Weekend. In fact the last ten minutes of the film are dominated by a very powerful performance by Duryea, very much rivaling what Milland got an Oscar for in The Lost Weekend. I'm betting that's what attracted Duryea to the role. As singer and accompanist Vincent and Duryea take a job at Peter Lorre's nightclub. Lorre is known to be mobbed up to the gills and the team hopes to find answers there. Black Angel is a real sleeper of a noir film with great performances all around by a talented group of players. But even with a scene stealer like Peter Lorre exuding the menace he does, the film is dominated by Dan Duryea who is a tragic figure.

The main things that personify the film noir genre are dark atmospheres and even darker characters. This film features shady examples of both; but neither is dark enough, which makes Black Angel very disappointing. The film is short at only eighty minutes and obviously didn't have a lot of budget; so as a result the plot is rather thin. We focus on the death of a woman and a man she was blackmailing; who gets blamed for her murder. His wife doesn't believe he did it and so sets out to prove his innocence; enlisting the help of drunken barfly and husband of the murdered woman along the way. June Vincent takes the starring role; but never really convinces as a femme fatale, and this brings the film down. She stars opposite Dan Duryea, who isn't particularly gritty as the leading man; and Peter Lorre, who is rather wasted. This film is directed by Roy William Neill; who is best known for his Sherlock Holmes films. This was actually Neill's last feature film before his death later in 1946; and it's disappointing that such a great director couldn't have gone out with something better. The main problem is certainly the plot; which never gets out of first gear and constantly fails to get the audience involved. Overall, this is a disappointing noir effort and I'd only recommend it to completists.

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 (Dan Duryea) so enveloped by melancholy 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. Cornell Woolrich (author of the original novel) was an alcoholic 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. Along with Duryea, the fine cast includes June Vincent, Peter Lorre, Broderick Crawford and Constance Dowling. Directed with stylish flair by Roy William Neill.

"Black Angel" is an unjustly forgotten film noir based on Cornell Woolrich's novel. Dan Duryea, tagged in the preview as "he's no angel again!", adds yet another complex, dark portrayal to his gallery of ambiguous bad guys as Martin Blair, the estranged husband of murder victim Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). Mavis is a devious singer who is blackmailing her married lover, Kirk Bennett (John Phillips). Her immaculately decorated apartment, haunting song "Heartbreak" playing in the background, her sheer black gown highlighting what a bad dame she is. Her blackmailer is shrewd, unscrupulous and will stop at nothing to get her way; Dowling's career never fully took off, most likely because of her unconventional screen presence and her independent mind (coincidentally, her sister, Doris Dowling, also appeared in a similar role in another noir of the same year, playing Alan Ladd's unfaithful lush wife in "The Blue Dahlia"). Since Mavis has made so many enemies for herself, it's not surprising that she ends up murdered. As he had the most apparent reason of anyone to want her dead, Bennett is arrested, charged and convicted (on rather circumstantial evidence) and sentenced to death. His loyal wife, Catherine (June Vincent, another under-appreciated talent), vows to clear her husband and enlists the help of Blair, who had passed out drunk after he last saw Mavis, and the pair team up to investigate nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre, exceptional performance), posing as a singing act. However, as with many film noirs, there are many red herrings, and things are not what they appear to be. The ending is a surprise and the killer's identity will keep you guessing to the film's conclusion. I don't know why this movie is barely remembered. There should have been records of the haunting vocal music. June Vincent, the last surviving cast member (she passed away a few years back), retired from show business relatively early, and it's a shame that she did not progress to more roles like this in A pictures. The DVD looks very good, although it shows faint signs of wear (which is to be expected for a film of its age), and the only extra included is the original theatrical trailer. Any fans of film noir should enjoy this one.

Black Angel (1946) What a vigorous, fast, surprising movie. This is a straight up crime film in a noir style, and Dan Duryea holds it up in his indecisive, regular guy kind of way. Duryea always has trouble as the leading man because he often plays a tough guy with a soft heart, and is a little whiny or annoying by design. It's an uncomfortable role to play, not quite sympathetic as the protagonist, not quite evil as the antagonist. A better B-movie, the budget just had enough room for someone like Duryea, and a small part for both Peter Lorre, who is fantastic (as usual) playing a suspicious night club owner, and Broderick Crawford, who is an oddly subdued detective. The leading woman, June Vincent, is fine in her part as an everyday woman caught up in an effort to save her husband from the death chamber, though she was chosen more for her singing than her acting. She and Duryea sing and play the piano together, and torch song music is central to the feel of the movie. Duryea might not actually be playing the piano but he does such a good job of faking it, he might have pulled it off. But what makes the film special? First of all, it's fast. The first twenty minutes have enough turns and dramatic climaxes for many entire movies. And then there's the filming, the visuals, which are vigorous and kinetic. The wild zoom in from the street up a tall building and into the room near the beginning is crazy--like low budget Gregg Toland from "Citizen Kane." But this is either cinematographer Paul Ivano, who is an uncredited photographer for part of "Frankenstein," believe it or not, or more likely the special effects guy, David Horsley, who helped with a whole slew of classics, including "Bride of Frankenstein," oddly enough. The scene near the end where Duryea is hallucinating is terrific, with its distortions. Whatever the faults of the movie (possibly the weakness of the female lead, who becomes the central character) it has so much surprise and velocity it is terrific anyway.

I love to find good movies where you're not expecting one. That's what happened with "Black Angel", adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel and is complete with his signature psychiatric undertones woven into the plot. Dan Duryea is the star of the film but with one big difference from his usual characters; here his trademark sardonic grin and snappy wisecracking dialogue are missing. He's not a tough guy in this one, but an average, hard-drinking shlub who gets sucked into solving a murder by a pretty face. The picture moves along at a brisk pace and almost defies you to guess the outcome (but you won't). Several dependable character actors are on hand to lend professionalism to the story, among them Broderick Crawford as a Police Lt. and Peter Lorre as a nightclub owner. Also Wallace Ford as his best friend/roommate. There are many plot descriptions among the reviewers, so suffice it to say that this is a vastly underrated, forgotten film noir which is one of the better examples of the genre. I can't say I've seen it listed on TCM but it is available on DVD. If you're a fan of noir you should see this one.

"The Black Angel" is really a great film-noir experience - plenty of plot twists throughout to really throw you off and some very interesting characters to boot! Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling), a beautiful, heartless blackmailer, is murdered and one of her paramours who is married is accused of the crime. His wife, Catherine Bennett (June Vincent) pairs up with Marty Blair (Dan Duryea) to do some investigating of their own. Marty Blair is the widower of Mavis Marlowe, which keeps things interesting! Enter some other interesting characters, a nightclub owner played by the always interesting and good actor Peter Lorre, who obviously has something to hide - and a Police Captain played by Broderick Crawford whose small part keeps the action going round and round! Someone had to kill Mavis - wonder which one of the characters had the strongest motive? Watch and find out! Now on VHS!!! I rate this film a 10 out of 10!

Of course, we're all familiar with the saying "The suspense is killing me!" - Right?... Well, with Black Angel, it isn't the suspense that'll kill you. No. It's the sheer boredom of it all that's gonna do you in, for sure. Black Angel was a very dry and uninspired "Whodunit" where it seemed to me that all of the actors were playing their parts in a state of half-stupefied sleep. I ain't kidding! It was the miscast actor, Dan Duryea, in particular, whose stunned character (the popular songwriter, Martin Blair) that seemed to be forever moping around in a muddled state of alcoholic amnesia. (I guess Blair was supposed to be the "black angel" who this film's title is referring to) Initially this amateurish Detective/Thriller started off with plenty of promising dramatic-clout. But once that snarling, queen-bitch, Mavis Marlowe got bumped off, its story took an immediate nose-dive as it continually turned over just about every melodramatic cliché in the book. And, speaking about actor Peter Lorre - It really killed me in a number of scenes where this 5' 3" pipsqueak was ordering everyone around, trying to be such a big, tough menace. Time & again, Lorre stood at least a full-head shorter in height than all the rest of the actors, including the women. Believe me, this munchkin posing as a tough guy was just too funny for words. *Trivia Note* - Black Angel was director Roy William Neill's last film. The following year, at the age of 59, he died of a heart attack.

Don't get me wrong I am a big fan of Dan Duryea particularly in movies like Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street but even he can't make chopped liver into fillet steak. I have read the other reviewers comments and they seem to love the movie big time. One even thinks it's the best noir of the 40s, kind of ridiculous really. I watched it twice because I thought I must have fallen asleep the first time and missed the good parts but the second time around I realsied there are no good parts. It's mediocre at best with poor to average acting. Dan is not the villain he usually is in fact his part does not suit him at all. Peter Lorre has a bit part that doesn't really add anything. The story is kind of dumb - a woman desperately in love with her husband who is on death row and a man so in love with his wife that he can't function in life without her combine to find the real killer and two days later they are in love with each other - give me a break.