The Tarnished Angels

 

Douglas Sirk, left, with Dorothy Malone and Rock Hudson

Dorothy Malone and Rock Hudson

Dorothy Malone

Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack

William Faulkner

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE TARNISHED ANGELS           A                                                                                     USA  (91 mi)  1957  ‘Scope  d: Douglas Sirk

A brooding, stunningly photographed black & white ‘Scope film, that from the opening look of the film of single-winged airplanes on an open airfield offers a feel of infinite spaciousness as far as the eye can see, quite a contrast from the closeted claustrophobic interiors Sirk is known for, one of the few German émigré filmmakers who did not specialize in film noir, instead known for his lush color-spectacled melodramas.  Getting to the hollowness behind the false idea of an American good life, viewing as one and the same America’s vitality and vacuity, its frankness and phoniness, as only an outsider could, this is an excellent George Zuckerman adaptation of an early, relatively minor William Faulkner novel, Pylon, one of the few not to be set in his fictionalized Yoknapatawpha County, set instead in New Orleans, where Faulkner lived and worked in the 20’s.  An exposé about daredevil pilots in the Depression-ridden 1930’s who risk their lives to win races and the prize money at air shows, a re-imagining of the novel by Sirk, growing darker as the film progresses, among his most despairing films, yet also perhaps his most moving film, examining the central characters with exquisite detail, offering some spectacular imagery shot by Irving Glassberg to guide us along the way, capturing extreme depth of space with wide angles and unusual complexity.  The film is about obsession, how we are attracted to things that fascinate us for a variety of reasons, and then can’t let go.  Incredibly pessimistic, to the point of bleak devastation, the film explores a dying art, featuring people existing on the fringes, barely able to eke out a living, yet they’re driven by the daredevil life they’ve chosen, where each day brings them just a bit closer to death.  Rock Hudson plays a New Orleans “90 proof” reporter who can’t help becoming entranced by the heroics and swagger of the husband and wife team of Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone, he a death-defying WWI flying ace known for his reckless bravado and she, a beautiful blonde that parachute jumps out of airplanes, with Jack Carson as their ogling ace mechanic who can fix anything except his aching heart for the girl.  Hudson starts by treating their constantly abandoned son to an ice cream cone, and when he discovers money is tight, he offers them his own apartment as a place to stay during a New Orleans air show, which takes place simultaneously with Mardi Gras, so there are spectacular scenes of carnival rides and highly decorated floats on crowded streets, costumed party revelers and giant masks that figure prominently in what we see, as behind the mask beats the real heart of a human being.  There’s actually some interesting interplay through the persistent interest the reporter takes with his subjects, becoming more than casually attracted to Malone, especially when he hears her just-a-girl-from-Iowa-who-falls-for-a-flying-ace story, as the pilot’s first love is always flying, only feeling at home in the air, totally lost on the ground, where she appears to have been emotionally bruised and neglected in the arrangement.  Hudson loses his job in a fight with his editor for refusing to let go of the story, so personal obsession and irreconcilable desires become conflicting partners in this fascinating examination of lonely human beings desperately living on the edge of their own dreams.  Evolving from the “women’s picture,” this film is told from a male perspective, through the eyes of a drunken reporter, much like Written On the Wind (1956), with Robert Stack in each film, who is a doomed male protagonist who falls on his own phallic sword, a tragic figure whose flawed shortcomings and catastrophic inner drive eventually lead to his own death.  Given a short yet momentous moment to realize the waywardness of his ways, he promises to set things right immediately following the race, offering surprising clarity for one fleeting moment, then dies heroically. 

According to a French article in L’Express in the late 50’s, it said the Academy Awards as usual had slighted the two most important films of the year—Touch of Evil and Tarnished Angels.  Douglas Sirk reportedly stated in an interview this was the best film he directed, while William Faulkner believed this film to be the best adaptation of his own works.  The performances are excellent, even Hudson (with Sirk suggesting he read T.S. Eliot beforehand, The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot | Poetry ...), moving back and forth from one to another, largely contributing to the evershifting underlying mood exposing the sordid lives they lead, as the camera is always on the move, as are the featured characters, shown through a variety of tracking shots, crane shots, and pans, as life never for a single moment ever stands still.  In a curious literary reference, Malone takes an interest in reading Willa Cather’s My Ántonia, conjuring up images of lost Iowa farms, offering insight into her own past, suggesting deep under the surface lies a Midwestern farmgirl.  The flying sequences are spectacular, combining a mixture of visual and narrated sequences edited together for the final race which are nothing short of breathtaking.  Hudson is surprised others don’t see what he sees, compulsively driven “because they’ve got to do it.  They can’t help themselves,” where it’s not just a fascination with danger, but the bravery to build a life around a peculiar obsession during desperately trying times.  They understand each other in ways that others can’t, a tight-knit group with little use for outsiders, and Hudson remains an outsider, yet to others they’re just gypsies living out of a bottle, small-timers, viewed as one might think of carnival workers, always setting up their tent in the next town, just part of a circus act, living hand-to-mouth, always just a step or two ahead of destitution, and their interpersonal relationships are unorthodox and shocking by the standards of the times.  However, when he allows them to live in his home, he identifies with flesh and blood souls and takes interest in what drives them, utterly fascinated by how low some people can sink while pursuing their dreams.  But the air is taken out of the film once the race is over, as the picking up of the pieces has the typical melodramatic allure, and all life seems to have been sucked out of the film.  We’re left with what appears to be a steady accumulation of defeats, an ill-fated  study of failure, about tortured characters who can’t make a success out of their life, leaving a spectacular sense of emptiness and loneliness, revealing the incredible ways we continue to fool ourselves, forever drawn to the alluring power of illusions, needing to believe in lies, suggesting loneliness is easier to bear if we accept those illusions.  Hudson reminds us, “There’s an old saying, nobody really dies until they’re forgotten.”  There’s a gentle finale, somewhat out of pace with the adrenaline-laced hysteria of the earlier scenes, but Hudson goes on a drunken bender and wanders back to the newspaper bureau to display his contempt for their lifeless, feeble coverage of the racing event, which he then recounts with vivid recollection, providing the personal insight about just who these people are and why they are so different from the rest of us, mostly because they dare to be different, and in their chosen profession, they can’t afford to let mere human emotions get in the way, as they routinely defy death for a living.  It becomes apparent that Hudson loves more than just the subject matter, but has a special fascination for the girl. 

According to Jon Halliday, who interviewed Sirk extensively for a book entitled Sirk On Sirk in 1971, “I think his interest in ambiguity was accentuated by the fact that many of his close friends and colleagues became Nazis; the difficulty of trusting people—i.e. being convinced that one knows who someone else really is and how they will behave under intense pressure,—became a dominant factor in Sirk’s life.”  The use of an inquiring journalist is an excellent device to dig under the surface, making this a probing character study, as Malone especially feels a need to talk, largely ignored and dismissed in her marriage, where nothing is ever discussed, no heart to hearts, yet she’s expected to carry her load all on her own, a daunting prospect, something she’s been living with for some time.  The circumstances surrounding her marriage are as cheap and tawdry as they come, handed over to the winner of a dice game.  The Depression is hard enough, but these death-defying stunts really cover up their sexual frustration, an indication of what’s missing and remains unspoken in their relationships.  So Rock Hudson catches her at a time when she feels especially vulnerable, using each other and plenty of alcohol to struggle for an authentic connection and really explore the deep underlying implications of her inner life, finally opening up about the neglect and humiliation she has suffered.  Making matters worse, when Stack loses his plane in a crash, he sends in Malone to submit to the sexual advances of a wealthy promoter (Robert Middleton) in exchange for another damaged plane that he intends to repair for the next day’s race, which is all but impossible, but he has little alternative.  Hudson intervenes, sparing her the shame and disgrace, deceitfully promising the promoter invaluable front page coverage that he knowingly can’t deliver.  Happiness in this film is not only elusive, but remains perpetually out of reach, thus the title, featuring characters who have fallen from grace, yet as in all Sirk films, the studio changed the ending, believing happy endings made more money.  The forces of fate are on magnificent display, however, and while there’s plenty of high drama, the sheer look of the film is unforgettable, Malone’s presence at an airfield, magnified by her wind tunnel-like hair and dress in a hurricane-like feminine display, as every male eye turns her way, Dorothy Malone - 'The Tarnished Angels' clip. - YouTube (1:13), reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe’s skirt getting blown up by an air blast from a steam grate in Billy Wilder’s THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH (1954), The Seven Year Itch - A Delicious Breeze Scene [60 FPS & 4K ... YouTube (2:05), repeated references to a blind man in dark glasses playing the calliope, emblematic for the uncomprehending characters who never really see the light, forever remaining in the dark, Hudson arriving at his apartment as seen though the unique vantage point of an overhead interior window where a nosy neighbor keeps popping his head out the door to spy on everyone, a theme Fassbinder re-used to perfection in ALI:  FEAR EATS THE SOUL (1974), New Orleans during a street-filled Mardi Gras, with torchlit floats and parades, including giant grotesque masks, spilling over to the apartment next door where a raucous costume party is in full swing, prominently featuring a blonde woman (a metaphorical reference to Malone’s alter ego) dancing seductively on a tabletop, with revelers dancing like hopped-up zombies to relentless Dixieland jazz, a blatantly obvious masquerade of happiness, leading to a stunning moment when Hudson and Malone are finally alone, but as they are about to embrace, a party reveler with a death mask breaks open the door, as if the voice of their subconscious guilt was on display, climaxing with a daredevil flying spectacle juxtaposed against a young boy on a flying carousel plane ride where unseen danger lurks around every turn.  This is a film that takes a nosedive into the tawdry world of basic instincts, and what lurks underneath is a murky atmosphere of highly imaginative disguises, each one a shadow of the human soul.  There is an explicit contrast between characters in Sirk films, between those who recognize the tragedy in their lives, like Dorothy Malone, and those who don’t, who deludedly refuse to recognize the obvious, like Robert Stack, except for a last minute revelation.  The distinction between depth and shallowness in his characters is central to Sirk and to the critique of American life these films reflect.  And this tragic consciousness pervades them all.

Video Essay. These Dead Souls: Douglas Sirk's "The ... - MUBI    video essay on THE TARNISHED ANGELS by Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López, May 7, 2018 (11:00)

The First Rasta (Le Premier Rasta)

THE FIRST RASTA (Le Premier Rasta)          C                    

France  Mauritius  (86 mi)  2010  d:  Hélène Lee and Christophe Farnarier

What this attempts to be is a documentary exploring the roots of the Rastafari movement in Jamaica, focusing on one individual who allegedly founded the movement in the 1930’s, Leonard Percival Howell, who was one of the 25,000 Jamaicans working on the Panama Canal as exploitive labor, where they were treated like a slave class by the dominating colonial powers, developing a socialist worldview, where footage from Eisenstein’s POTEMKIN (1925) is utilized to express his internationalist “workers of the world” sentiment.  When the Canal was completed just prior to World War I, and the subsequent Russian Revolution, the Jamaicans were quickly expelled from Panama, becoming rootless exiles abandoned by the world, mostly penniless and uneducated.  Marcus Garvey attracted the attention of many blacks, as he spoke to the heart of displaced Africans, advocating a “Back to Africa” movement which inspired a Black Nationalist movement within Jamaica, a former slave colony that remained under British colonial rule.  In the early 1930’s a religious and social movement called Rastafarianism evolved in Jamaica, claiming Garvey as a prophet, where Haile Selassie, the last emperor of Ethiopia, was considered a living God, known as “Ras Tafari,” as prophesized by Garvey who claimed an African King would be crowned.  Followers of Emperor Salassie withdrew from Jamaican society and refused to pay taxes to Britain, rejecting Christianity as a “white religion,” calling discriminatory Western culture a modern day Babylon.  Howell established the first Rastafarian community in 1939 on a remote Jamaican hillside location called the Pinnacle, where what attracted Howell’s attention was learning to be self-reliant without depending upon the whites, where many Rastafarians adopted the naturally grown ganga (marijuana) as their sacred herb.  

One particular difficulty with this film is the state of confusion running throughout, as the filmmakers use the African style of talking history, where friends and family of Howell describe what they remember about their experience, where for some of the elders this is more than 50 or 60 years ago, where what is immediately evident is that none of the “witnesses” have any formal education, so their descriptions of life at the Pinnacle are vague and incomplete, never really mentioning why they came together as a group in the first place, what spiritual kinship they shared, or what initial hardships they must have endured attempting to be completely self-reliant for such a large group of nearly 3000 people.  Viewers may be scratching their heads trying to figure out what was really happening and why, as one envisions something like a back to nature utopia, but Howell himself expressed interest in multiple wives, which was not addressed, and no one describes any food arrangement, work requirements, or communal rules, yet this went on for some twenty years, but the director certainly offers little help in pulling this Pinnacle material together with pictures or stories or any sort of historical reference.  Instead the film is a series of fragmented recollections, tainted memories, really, as much of it is filled with the bitterness of disillusion, as shortly after a visit to the island by the British Queen in 1959, prior to achieving independence in 1962, the Pinnacle was subject to a major police raid that destroyed the living compounds, burning much of it to the ground while also making several arrests, basically shutting down the operation and sending people fleeing in all directions.  No one mentions any legal basis or justification for the raid, even in the most general terms other than to suggest they were defying colonial mentality by attempting to be free and liberated.  However there is some reason to believe there may have been an ongoing series of raids before the community was destroyed, where the perceived negative social repercussions from the out of control ganga drug enterprise within Jamaica may have become the tipping point.    

It begs the question, now that they are an independent country, what’s stopping them from building another self-reliant Rastafarian community?  Instead the painted portrait is of a scattered presence on the island, with many living instead in urban ghettos, largely responsible for creating bass heavy ska music in the 50’s before evolving into Reggae music in the 60’s, which became internationally accepted due to the influence of the acclaimed Bob Marley, who accentuated many Rastafarian themes in his music, like Bob Marley & The Wailers 'Rastaman Chant' (2:24), but you won’t find them here in this film.  Instead, the filmmaker likes to gather a group of guys, young and old, on the street playing drums and chanting Rastafarian songs, where a singer calls out, like a church preacher, which is followed by a choir response, creating a hypnotic rhythm, much like the Cuban Guaguancó style music seen here:  Guaguancó - YouTube (1:41).  We see this stylized arrangement 4 or 5 times in the film, each seemingly on-the-spot, where it’s apparent music has endured even as much of the Black Nationalist sentiment has become marginalized.  Instead the music suggests one love, one heart, and a kind of universal interracial community living in harmony, much like predominate Mardi Gras themes, which also mix French, African, and Indian cultures into a rhythmic and highly percussive beat.  What’s missing from the discussion is any mention of education or cultural rights, as a prevailing theme throughout the film is a portrait of dispossessed people who remain poor and uneducated inside Jamaica today, whose collective political voice remains silent, perhaps representing only about 1 % of Jamaican society, yet their desire to remain opposed to the typical societal dictates of greed and consumerism and instead advocate a healthier back to the land lifestyle of self reliance remains admirable.  But this documentary is spotty at best, leaving out a more historical perspective for personal talking points that simply don’t reveal the whole story of what remains an elusively intriguing subject.