THE TARNISHED ANGELS, Douglas Sirk’s cinematic adaptation of Faulkner’s Depression-era novel PYLON, repeats the winning formula of WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956), with Hudson. Malone and Stack, all returning to the fold. Yet, for those who are ensorcelled by Sirk’s variegated palette, the big comedown is that it is a black-and-white fare.
Hudson plays Burke Devlin, a journeyman-cum-lush, gets interested in the barnstorming airshow, and meets Roger Shumann (Stack), a daredevil WWI ace and his wife LaVerne (Malone), a parachute stuntwoman, and their 9-year-old son Jack (Olsen), plus Jiggs (Carson), the grease monkey. Will he get a substantial story out of his involvement? The denouement is more than what he bargains for.
LaVerne is the neglected wife, sadly even her marriage is the outcome of a dice game, yet, between the good ol’ Jiggs and a stony-faced Roger, a woman is destined to pick the high-flying, handsome hero who is ill-equipped for love and family. Burke’s advent gives her an opportunity to make a clean breast of it, he is a charming, tender receptacle of her pent-up discontent, they might have a passionate affair, but that doesn’t change the status quo. Burke is far too righteous a man to interfere a holy union, and LaVerne can never get over her stolid Prince Charming, is indiscriminately at his beck and call, even for an immoral proposition, she will hardly demur. That is the draw of a man like Roger, his hard-nosed, hellbent masculine toxin that gins up eligible girls’ romanticized fancy of “a man worth marrying”, LaVerne would be far more happier with Jiggs, but both in Faulkner’s head space and in Hollywood’s propaganda mill, a soft touch like him has no chance of winning the girl, even second-handedly.
The love triangle is namby-pamby, Roger’s promised fresh start is tinged with a blasé fatality that even a toddler can outguess what is in the horizon, the emotional tangle in THE TARNISHED ANGELS is a few notches below the torrid quotient in Sirk’s other films, notably the three also starring Hudson. Even so, a Sirk’s picture is never unprepossessing, the striking chiaroscuro overshadows the dark corners of one’s unsaid vice, and the aerobatics are brilliantly maneuvered (LaVerne’s base jump is deceptively astounding) save for the final crash, obviously there is a shallow, artificial pond right in front of our eyes, how can they not find the body?
Acting wise, Stack is too self-serious and uptight to hint Roger’s inability of adjusting a fly boy’s life in peace time; Carson is a remarkable sidekick as Jiggs, who unfairly takes the short end of the stick when all is said and done (why no one wants to recruit such a proficient mechanic?), you feels sorry for him, but in the same breath thinks he deserves the misery because of his weakness; Malone asserts herself glamorously under the monochromatic allure, she could be a tamed man-eater, or a saintly mother, but never asks for our compassion; finally, Hudson appears as a solid lead, and delivers perchance his most eloquent monologue in the aftermath of the tragedy, a conventional Hollywood leading man in a full-bore mold, all square and virtuous, not unlike its soft-pedaled ending, extricating a woman from her seedy acquiescence and humorously setting up a future reunion, oh, what a dreamboat!
referential entries: Sirk’s LURED (1947, 6.5/10); WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956, 8.0/10).