Written by Roy Chanslor
Directed by Roy William Neill
USA, 1946
Famous recording artist Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling) has sheltered herself from her drunkard husband Martin Blair (Dan Duryea) in her lush Los Angeles condo. To ensure tranquility and peace of mind, she has asked the doorman to disallow Martin from reaching her, the latter looking up anxiously from street level at her window high above. The doorman’s rebuttals send Martin into a drinking frenzy, during which time another man, Kirk Bennet (John Phillips), enters Mavis’ home for reasons unknown only to find her dead. It isn’t long before the police track Kirk to his homely domain, where his wife Catherine sees her better half arrested for murder, sending her into a tizzy. With Kirk convicted and sentenced to death, Catherine takes it upon herself to piece together the puzzle to clear her husband’s name. To do so, she must call upon the help of Martin to find and extract a critical piece of evidence from nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre), a third man seen at the condominium the night of the murder.
Not everyone enjoys movies that take the long roundabout way just to make their point. For some, a film that gets its ideas across efficiently and is sharply focused from start to finish is superior to another that bides its time, relishing in its ambiguity. Then again, not all movies that bide their time and crisscross various salient points do so effectively, ultimately leaving the viewer to ask themselves what the point was after all. Director Roy William Neill, for all his abilities to splash his picture with ambitious flourishes, struggles to make heads or tails of what his 1946 effort Black Angel is trying to accomplish story-wise. By the time the film closes, the biggest challenge for the viewer is trying to understand why he or she should care at all about everything that transpired. The plotting lacks a foundational logic for the themes to ring true or to mean anything for that matter.
With only 80 minutes to tell its tale, Black Angel takes a surprisingly long time setting all its pawns in motion. More pressing is the fact that it has to juggle a handful of characters, explain who was blackmailing who and why (there are even multiple schemes to make certain that proceedings are sufficiently complicated) until establishing Catherine and Martin as the actual protagonists with Marko as the target of their suspicions. By the time the heroes concoct a plan to audition as a pianist-singer duo for a job at Marko’s club, a significant portion of the run time has elapsed, forcing the filmmakers to deal with a lot of story in little time. If that is not cause for concern, consider that Catherine and Martin perform their undercover show as Marko’s employees for 3 weeks, all while Catherine’s husband is counting the days until his execution (Phillips is never seen again after his few early scenes, making it all the easier to forget that his character is why the central figures are doing what they’re doing). Is there no way of speeding up the process given that a man’s life hangs in the balance? Events take an even stranger turn when, having finally committed the act to locate a jewel that could theoretically incriminate Marko for the murder of Mavis Marlowe, it is revealed that the police already determined the club owner’s innocence. The film goes so far as to have Marko explain that he knew Catherine’s identity all along. Marko, an innocent man in all of this, shied away from telling Catherine, whom he knew was clearly taking on a persona to help her incarcerated husband, that whatever intelligence she hoped to gather from him rested on false hope. This barely makes sense. Provided he was unaware of what precise piece of evidence she was hunting, could he not have lent her a helping hand to speed up the process under the circumstances?
The final reveal is disappointingly anti-climactic, rendering most of the information the viewer was provided up until then moot. Facts elaborated on by the filmmakers through one of the principal characters earlier is completely erroneous, although why is unclear. In fact, had the facts been communicated from the start, Black Angel might have provided considerable food for thought regarding notions of guilt and the fear of persecution. Instead, Neill performs a bit of retroactive continuity in the final 10 minutes, considerably lessening the punchline’s impact. The issue is that this sudden twist fails to add anything of consequence to the story. Quite the contrary, it makes it even more difficult to discern what the story is about, resulting in the worst possible scenario: the viewer’s lethargy
As previously stated, the direction is admirably stylish with the ability to surprise the viewer with a series of cleverly devised shots that catch the eye for their beauty and inventiveness. Right off the bat, Neill and cinematographer Paul Ivano aim for an awe-inspiring moment with a crane shot from Martin’s point of view as he gazes upwards at Mavis’ condo window, then lifts in the air upwards to said window and eventually creeps into her bedroom through the blinds. All this is executed with the illusion that not a single edit is made during the sweeping sequence. Considering that back in the 1940s, computer-generated trickery was not an option for filmmakers, the shot is immensely impressive. A different degree of ingenuity is required to pull off a coup of such magnitude. There are equally impressive optical illusions near the end of the picture when a character enters a drunken stupor and is attacked by a series of visions, further proof of at least some of the creative vision that went into producing the film.
More mixed is the casting and the resulting performances. June Vincent is a true talent, a wonderful actress who made her mark in both film and television. Black Angel isn’t the nadir of her acting career. The earlier scenes allow for her to showcase a bit more toughness of character, more resolve and heart than later in the story. The first half puts more emphasis on Catherine’s struggle to contain her emotions whilst determined to mine the field of possible avenues to search for clues, much like Ella Raines in Phantom Lady, with the exception that the results in Black Angel fail to leave as indelible a mark on the viewer. Her role becomes increasingly subservient to Peter Lorre and Dan Duryea. Lorre, usually inimitable, does not look to be investing too much effort in the role of Marko, practically sleepwalking as the not-so-Machiavellian restaurateur. He has a distinctive acting style that almost always makes him an oddly magnetic presence, but the juices are visibly running low in Black Angel. Dan Duryea is the surprising standout, previously seen in Scarlet Street as a no-good scammer; the part of Martin is far and away more complex. Martin is a desperate, broken man, but when the opportunity to shed further light on his wife’s death beckons, his entire demeanor shifts. From sulking drunkard, he is invigorated by Catherine’s proposal to work together and may be equally invigorated by Catherine herself. Duryea has such a sly way of delivering his lines, it makes him the perfect foil for a thriller, so seeing him as a tortured soul here is revelatory.
Unfortunately what positives the film sports are balanced out by the misfires. The plot operates on loopy logic at times and fails to have salient thematic resonance. Given the stylish visuals and a breakout performance from Dan Duryea, it is shame that Black Angel as a whole is not any better.
— Edgar Chaput