Black Angel (1946)

Posted by Paul M

Black Angel is a 1946 B-Noir, directed by Roy William Neill and based on a Cornell Woolrich novel. Woolrich apparently disliked the film, and the script veers quite a bit from the novel, save the atmospheric twist ending. While it is not among the very greatest noirs, it comes smack in the middle of the classic 40's cycle and so doesn't present the rehashed feel that some early 50s noirs do, for me anyway. I must say I like the 40's noirs the best, as they are visually more stylish: more shadows, hulking cars, more walk-up tenements. Black Angel is not very stylized in this way, however; cinematographer Paul Ivano does a competent job, and there are several close-ups, especially of Dan Duryea while drunk or hallucinating that are very well done. In my opinion, the payoff of an evening spent watching Black Angel has to be the ensemble cast.

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Martin Blair (Dan Duryea) and Catherine Bennett (June Vincent) team up to solve the murder of Martin's ex-wife, Mavis Marlowe (now there's a noir name!) who as our token chanteuse fatale gets one bitchy scene and is then summarily dispatched in the name of plot establishment. It turns out that Catherine's husband, Kirk Bennett (a forgettable-and-downtrodden John Phillips), was having an affair with Mavis and was seen entering her apartment just before her death. Martin, an alcoholic piano player who wants Mavis back... or let's just say, he can't get her out of his mind, also makes an appearance at her building the same night. When the cops haul Kirk off to death row for Mavis' murder, Catherine tracks down Martin, suspecting he knows something, and the countdown is on to find the real killer before our pathetic adulterer Kirk gets the chair.

Martin doesn't remember a thing about the night of Mavis' murder, and his alibi is that he was unconscious in bed, sleeping one off after after getting booted from Mavis' building by the doorman. He agrees to help Catherine track down a brooch he gave to Mavis and which is conspicuously absent from her apartment. They reason that if they find the brooch, they find the killer. Since Mavis was last employed at Rio's, a nightclub run by sleazy Marko (Peter Lorre), they go undercover as a musical pair and get hired to headline at Marko's joint. But as the deathrow deadline approaches, their leads pan out after a surprising confrontation with Marko and then Martin begins to remember what happened during his bender the night Mavis was killed...

The best thing about Black Angel is undoubtedly Dan Duryea. He plays against type as an ill-fated and very sympathetic piano-playing drunk. His flophouse associates all mother him through his drunken stupors. Duryea in 1946 was already well known as an on-screen misogynist due to his sinister turns in Fritz Lang's films The Woman In The Window and Scarlet Street. As Fast Eddie points out in his excellent book Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir,promotional material for the film even emphasized the point that (surprise!) Dan doesn't lay a finger on June Vincent.

Vincent for her part starts out slow and not very interesting but gets better by the minute. You can play this game: watch how her outfits change throughout the film. In the beginning, she's a homely housewife defending her cad husband. She wears a houndstooth two-piece suit through much of the first half of the film that recalls the bad fashion in The Big Sleep that necessitated a Bacall re-shoot. Once the Marko club gig is on, however, she's all ball gowns and silk, and her acting seems to improve as well. The highlight for me: her first confrontation with Peter Lorre, when he invites her to his office, ostensibly to gift her a brooch as reward for the good publicity brought the club by her headline act. Terrified that he might be onto her, and with tears in her eyes matched only by the glitter of her copious jewelry, the scene ends as Lorre's Marko pulls out a bottle of champagne saved just for a "special occasion" and we are left with the lingering suggestion of sex to come.

Other curiosities: Broderick Crawford stars here as Captain Flood, an extremely laid-back police detective who is willing to check up on Catherine and Martin's leads -- but not much, and his dry humor is entertaining. Freddie Steele as Marko's dim-witted thug manager Lucky is hilarious too. The early-to-dead Mavis was played by Constance Dowling, whose real life was more noir than this film: she had a much-publicized relationship with Cesare Pavese, who committed suicide after she dumped him. Her only other noir appearances are in Blind Spot & The Flame. Even director Neill didn't escape noir tragedy, as he died of a heart attack just after finishing this film and retiring to England, just 59 years old.

And finally, here's my four-word film review: "Broach subject, croons June."