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18 out of 25 people found the following comment useful :-
The Blight Stuff, 12 April 2003
8/10
Author: Piafredux from United States

Alone, during an all night boot camp fire midwatch in a huge, sepulchral building, at one o'clock in the morning I dared (had I gotten caught I'd have done a punishment tour at 'Happy Hour') to switch on the TV in the Master At Arms' office. On came the titles of 'The Tarnished Angels'.

I've been enthralled by it ever since.

It would be a revelation to get to see this film in CinemaScope, but it's one of those few films whose themes seem to be intensified by pan-and-scan: the characters' claustrophobic loneliness in a throng; the pressing anxiety of a child about his parentage; the narrowing, time-running-out bravado of the former war ace; the ache of the mechanic who can fix only aeroplanes but not his timorousness; the naked greed and lust of the depression mogul lucky to have been spared the worst of his era's depredations; the despair of the wife who followed a man and ended up jilted by his corpse, with no place to turn; and the outside-looking-in fascination, desolation, and crashed dreams of a reporter lying torpidly in a pond of bootleg hootch.

Atypical of director Sirk's opus 'The Tarnished Angels' shows his grasp of his medium in the haunting chiaroscuro of black & white, and in the edgy editing of the flying scenes that furnish the only relief from - or should that be masterful exacerbation of - the confining, torturous ties and jealousies, yearnings and flailings that bind the characters in existential angst.

Not much of a plot here, but the acting is to marvel at. Robert Stack's muscular, sexy, once-genuine hero turns to tin before your eyes. Dorothy Malone's aching milk-and-honey farm girl fecundity, horse-traded libido, and lovelessness struggle against the vast flush of the Depression's The Blight Stuff toilet in which her husband's sole skill is no life preserver for his family's plunge into life-and-death, give-and-give, take-and-take despair. Rock Hudson's goodhearted reporter, yearning to find some goodness in humankind, having his search thwarted by the grinder of want and need, loyalty and betrayal, helplessness and manipulation. The mogul frustrated because his only skill is heavy-handed buying and selling (played wonderfully by Robert Middleton - in a diabolical role that makes the bargain in 'Indecent Proposal' look frivolously angelic by comparison), whose physiognomy oozes reptilian menace that cloaks his unrelievable aching to possess one immutable, beautiful, worthy thing.

'The Tarnished Angels' left me feeling as wrung out as the overstressed airframes in its hell-for-leather air race scenes, and quite a bit more grown-up than I was before I'd seen its characters rooting round in the Depression gutters of abasement and debasement.

After my midwatch, near dawn, when I tumbled into my open-bay barracks rack, I couldn't sleep. I wished for an angel to hand me a tin of BrassO for my coming-of-age, tarnishing soul.

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12 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
Tarnished Angels is a great film, 20 September 2005
Author: taguanutivory from United States

I was fortunate enough to attend a screening of "The Tarnished Angels," on a wide screen with a fresh print, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City back in 1980, with no less than Douglas Sirk himself invited by MOMA as a special guest. The film blew everybody away emotionally; Hudson, Stack, and Malone all give performances that are equally tough and vulnerable, but the grandeur of Sirk's mise-en-scene, which really has to be seen in a theater on a wide screen to be fully appreciated, is a textbook example of the art of telling a story in film terms with both force and grace. Don't mind the other reviewer; Faulkner himself, according to Sirk, said it was the best adaptation of his work he had seen in films.

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10 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
A slight departure for director-extraordinarre Douglas Sirk, 29 April 1999
6/10
Author: Michael Bragg (mbragg@menlocollege.menlo.edu) from Redwood Shores, CA

Although Douglas Sirk was Universal's house director in the mid-late 1950's turning out glossy soap after glossy soap (1954's "Magnificent Obsession", 1955's "All That Heaven Allows", 1959's "Imitation of Life"), he took a slight diversion with "The Tarnished Angels". Besides being in black and white, this actioner is much less sudsy than Sirk's other films of the era. Using the prinipal players from his 1956 epic soap "Written on the Wind", he creates a fast-paced melodrama following the adventures of a family of airplane stunt people and the reporter who is drawn into their world. Robert Stack is Roger Shumann, a stunt pilot, Dorothy Malone is his beautiful parachutist wife, and Rock Hudson is Burke Devlin, the intrigued reporter.

Roger is devasated when he crashes his prized plane, so another pilot(Robert Middleton) makes Roger a deal. He'll give Roger his plane in exchange for Roger's wife,LaVerne(Malone). Meanwhile, a used and abused LaVerne falls for Burke. There's not much here at all by way of plot. In fact, the film is really dull in that aspect. But what gives this movie legs are the brilliantly directed action sequences(some of the best ever captured on celluloid)and tremendous performances from Stack, Malone, and Hudson. Malone is especially amazing, following up her Oscar-win the previous year for "Written on the Wind". Mediocre film, interesting especially to Sirk fans.

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12 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
I'll Take This Sirk-Stack-Malone-Hudson Story, 22 August 2006
8/10
Author: ccthemovieman-1 from Lockport, NY, United States

Even though I haven't seen this movie in quite a while, it's ironic I would write this review shortly after viewing "Written On The Wind" for the first time recently. "Ironic" because of the main actors star in both films: Robert Stack, Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone, and both films were directed by Douglas Sirk.

Personally, I thought this film was far more interesting than the more well-known WOTW. This was a better story.

Dorothy Malone, for one, looked a heckuva lot better in this movie. She had some classic beauty and shows it here more than the trampy role in the other film.

I also preferred this film because it had some fascinating and dramatic flying scenes, things I have never seen before on film. Apparently, they had these 1930s air races in which planes few around pylons, almost like a horse race on land. This is the only film I've seen that pictured.

Another thing I enjoyed was Hudson's dramatic story at the end of the movie which, at first, seemed ridiculously melodramatic but was said so well that I found in very compelling, and it tied the whole story together.

I also appreciated Malone doing the right thing at the end, telling off Hudson for coming on to her, since she was a married woman. This is one of the few films - including those in the 1950s - in which adultery is NOT treated mater-of-factly.

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Powerful, 5 November 2001
9/10
Author: zetes from Saint Paul, MN

Let's get this straight right off the bat: I have read William Faulkner's novel Pylon, and Douglas Sirk's cinematic adaptaion of it, Tarnished Angels, lives in the original's shadow. Pylon, which for some reason is the only Faulkner novel currently out of print, is one of that glorious author's best works. Still, the film is an excellent achievement. The story's power may be a bit lessened, but Sirk's direction as well as the performances of Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack, and Jack Carson make up for it. And while the plot suffers from reductions, the dialogue, much of which, I'm pretty sure, was not in the novel, is very good. The best scene in the film is Rock Hudson's drunken and passionate speech in the news room near the end of the film. In the novel, the equivalent of that speech is found in a garbage can. The final image of the novel is of the newspaper editor reading Burke Devlin's impassioned, prosaic description of the final pylon race. It's a perfect ending for a novel, but the screenwriter here was right in putting those words, or at least the idea of those words, back into Devlin's mouth.

Tarnished Angels is equal in artistic accomplishment to the other great Sirk film I've seen, Written on the Wind. Both star Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone, but there is a big difference between the two. Written on the Wind is a florid melodrama, the kind that Sirk was famous for. The colors are almost psychedelic, and the level of melodrama makes it feel like the world is about to end. Tarnished Angles is filmed in black and white, and, while it is melodramatic, it never feels like it's going over the edge. Sirk plays it at a level where you can feel the desperation of the characters (the novel, which isn't as prudish (the film, of course, was made under the Hayes Code), depicts a level of loss and desperation that is simply murder; the ending of the film, which I wouldn't exactly call happy, is a hundred times less depressing than that of the novel). But, unlike in Written on the Wind, it never seems like Sirk is laughing at or making fun of the characters in Tarnished Angels. It seems like he meant this film to be an honest adaptation of a great novel. He succeeded quite well. 9/10.

PS: The Criterion Company recently released Written on the Wind and All That Heaven Allows on DVD. I beg them to release this one next. The version on VHS is cropped from its widescreen glory, and you can tell. It feels very cluttered and claustrophobic, and often the panning and scanning seem choppy. The opening credits keep the widescreen, and it looks like it might be an even more visually spectacular film than I noticed. I really wish that they wouldn't get my hopes up by holding the original aspect ratio through the opening credits. What I want to see one day is the word "CINEMASCOPE" cropped to "EMASC" at the beginning of a film in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio.

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6 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
Tarnished melodrama with unbelievable characters..., 14 October 2006
5/10
Author: Neil Doyle from U.S.A.

ROBERT STACK is a barnstorming stunt pilot in the '30s who'd been a hero aviator during the first World War. He's abusive to his loyal wife (DOROTHY MALONE) and his expert mechanic (JACK Carson) and anybody he comes into contact with. For some strange reason, newspaperman ROCK HUDSON is interested enough in this threesome to want to do a news story on them as they prepare to enter various air contests. After briefly encountering them, he even puts them up at his place when they're out of lodgings and soon becomes enmeshed in their lives.

But Hudson does deliver a solid monologue at the end when he storms into the newspaper office to give his boss the lowdown on what kind of story he uncovered. It's one of his best moments and he carries it off like a real pro.

Stack plays his sullen heel with his usual brash, solemn demeanor. A flabby looking Jack Carson plays the mechanic who's secretly still in love with Stack's wife, Malone. Malone is quietly effective as the wife who suffers and suffers while Stack's mistreatment goes unchecked, except by Hudson. Surprisingly, this is all taken from a William Faulkner novel which must have had stronger characters and situations than are depicted here.

It's a stormy emotional drama that makes little sense, directed with a certain amount of style by Douglas Sirk even though it does not use his usual trademark--Technicolor. All the emotional strife makes it a pretty heavy-handed, florid melodrama. Hudson's noble turn at the end makes a new woman of Malone, who decides to accept his offer to return to her roots in Iowa with her little son. None of it seems to ring true, at least to me.

Best feature: the flying air scenes are well staged and photographed for maximum effect--but it's hard to care about any of the characters.

Trivia note: TROY DONAHUE has a small role as an ill-fated pilot competing against Stack.

On the debit side, DOROTHY MALONE's costuming and hair style doesn't suggest the 1930s at all, but the 1950s.

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
The Forgotten Sirk Film...Still Watchable for His Familiar Touch, 19 October 2006
7/10
Author: Ed Uyeshima from San Francisco, CA, USA

This is the forgotten Douglas Sirk film from his golden period in the 1950's when he made such classic Baroque-style women's pictures as "Magnificent Obsession", "All That Heaven Allows", "Written on the Wind" and "Imitation of Life". The black-and-white 1958 film doesn't have the saturated color palette of Sirk's frequent cinematographer, Russell Metty (who did lens those other films), nor does the story, based on William Faulkner's novel "Pylon", have as strong an orientation toward a female protagonist as the others. Yet, the film has many of the filmmaker's trademark melodramatic flourishes and some superb shot compositions, this time photographed by Irving Glassberg. The result is quite worthwhile and sadly not available yet on DVD.

Set in 1932 New Orleans (though you can hardly tell from the anachronistic 1950's-era wardrobe and sets), the plot focuses on Roger Shumann, a former WWI flying ace who has been relegated to racing around pylons in air shows for prize money. He's married to LaVerne, so in love with Roger that she became a parachute jumper to please him, while raising their son Jack, who worships the ground on which Roger walks. Speaking of hero worship, there is also the dim-witted Jiggs, Roger's loyal mechanic, who holds a torch for LaVerne. Into this dysfunctional band comes local newspaperman Burke Devlin, who smells a good story in reporting on this transient family living hand to mouth to fulfill Roger's intractable need to fly. A lot of emotional gut-punches are thrown among these characters, especially between Roger and LaVerne, until a late moment of clarity seems to arrive too late. The last fifteen minutes contain come far-fetched plot convolutions, but they are in the spirit of the piece.

Sirk reunited three of his stars from 1956's "Written on the Wind" - Rock Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone - to play the three principals, so they know how to maintain conviction with more than a touch of Sirk's often maddening soap opera excess. Hudson, in particular, really shines in this sort of material as Devlin, even in a hilariously conceived drunken speech at the end. Stack is his typical jaw-clenching self though with a morbid sense of self-loathing only Sirk could serve up, and Malone is surprisingly sensual as LaVerne, whether fighting off her impulses about Devlin or hanging on to a trapeze bar as she floats off her parachute with her skirt billowing up (a classic shot). Jack Carson plays Jiggs as the pathetically smitten man he is, while Christopher Olsen has a heartbreaking scene where he is stuck on an amusement park ride watching fate deal its hand (trivia - Olsen is Cindy Brady's real-life brother). This isn't an out-and-out great film but still a very watchable entry in the Sirk canon.

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Such an underrated film, 14 June 2009
10/10
Author: Jem Odewahn from Australia

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

While most critics rate "All That Heaven Allows" and "Written On The Wind" as Sirk's best, I found myself most drawn to this film, and I can't wait to see it again. Sirk filmed this drama in black and white Cinemascope as he couldn't get backing for his trademark lush colour as Universal bosses hated the original source material, William Faulkner's novel "Pylon". Black and white 'Scope actually benefits "Tarnished Angels" because it captures the bleakness of both the 30's setting (although the costumes are all 50's) and the character's circumstances. And, as all film noir fans know, an emotionally charged night scene always looks best in shadowy black and white. I found this film the most thematically interesting of all Sirk's, and the characters the most captivating. Dorothy Malone is even better here than in "Written On The Wind", as the ignored wife of Robert Stack's flier, who is king of the skies yet seemingly emotionally barren when he hits the earth. The Shuman's might be one of the most tragic couples in movie history, both desperately in love with each other at cross purposes. Rock Hudson gives perhaps his best performance as alcoholic reporter Devlin, who forges a connection with the sad Malone borne out of mutual loneliness. The direction by Sirk is terrific and he makes the flying scenes thrilling and the emotional scenes breathtaking.

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Written on the sky, 23 April 2009
8/10
Author: dbdumonteil

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

After two undistinguished movies ("Battle Hymn" and "interlude" ),Sirk teamed up again with three actors of the fabulous quartet who made "written on the wind" a classic of the fifties.Robert Stack told once Sirk was his favorite director and Rock Hudson was never better than with Sirk with whom he made 8 movies,including some of the director's best ("wind" "all that Heaven allows" "magnificent obsession").This one was the last one they made together:it is the gloomiest of them all and its bleak black and white is downright depressing.

"Tarnished angels" takes place in dark rooms in the darkest night ,and the thought of Death hangs over the whole film: this dead head which suddenly bursts in the bedroom where Hudson is comforting Malone (absolutely stunning) ,the black birds , flying in the sky on the fateful morning,the coffin they carry on a desert airstrip.In Sirk's follow-up,"a time to love and a time to die" Death will be felt everywhere ,not only on the battle fields ,but also in Berlin in ruins: this empty street where there's only a hearse and a horse while the inhabitants are in the shelter is an exact equivalent of the scene of the coffin at dawn.

He transcends melodrama with his end-of-the-world pictures .The flaming colors of the cars tearing along the oil wells road or of the clothes in "written on the wind " have given way to gray: old crates , washouts ,forgotten heroes(Stack) ,lost illusions (romantic heroine,a reporter who is always drunk :Hudson's hair is all messed up ,and people who think he was a limited inexpressive actor should watch the scene when he "writes" Stack's epitaph in front of his boss and his colleagues .Dorothy Malone,too,found her two best parts in Sirk's movies before ending up as Sharon Stone's lover in "basic instinct " (her reappearance was the only interest of that flick,at least to my eyes,even if it only were for three or four minutes).We feel that Sirk is missing Zarah Leander ,his German star of the thirties and that,among all the American actresses he worked with,Malone was certainly the one who remained him the most his lost chanteuse.Although she won the actress for the part of Marylee,her portrayal of LaVerne is subtler,deeper ,less clichéd and more moving . Stack is as good as in "wind" :he could not have a child in the former and there was this genial short scene of a kid riding a clockwork horse ;in the latter there's this sublime sequence of his boy in his little plane when his father's crate is crashing.His character is reminiscent of the heroes of the thirties ,these of " heroes for sale" or " I'm a fugitive from a chain gang" ,people who risked their lives for their country and who got a raw deal afterward .

There's a terrifying contrast between the lugubrious atmosphere of the movie and the Mardi Gras festivities;Sirk works with his camera the way a painter does with light ,to create different effects and textures highlights and shadows , recalling sometimes his German era,filming the shadow of the blinds on a face like he used to do in such works as "la Habanera" (1937).

Like this?Try this ......

"The gypsy moths" ,John Frankenheimer (1969)

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THE TARNISHED ANGELS (Douglas Sirk, 1958) ***, 29 January 2009
7/10
Author: MARIO GAUCI (marrod@melita.com) from Naxxar, Malta

Though exchanging his usual glossy urban surroundings for a rough open-air environment – dealing as it does with vagrant members of an air show/race (which is perhaps why it was shot in black-and-white) – this typical Sirk effort is particularly redolent of his Teutonic background: powerful (indeed often histrionic), moodily-lit and with performances to match (allowing Rock Hudson one of his finest dramatic showcases, most effective towards the end when he gives his newspaper editor boss a piece of his mind). Incidentally, its three stars – Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone – had just come off the same director's WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956); Malone is the woman admired by virtually the entire male cast including her egocentric spouse (ace flyer Stack), his long-suffering mechanic (Jack Carson), hated entrepreneur (Robert Middleton) and, the latest recruit, honest (read alcoholic) reporter Hudson. Also on hand is a young boy, picked on over his doubtful parentage, whom Hudson befriends and offers hospitality to his whole family (eventually tagging along himself after being fired from his job). Malone opens her heart to him one night and he decides to help when Stack has no qualms about his wife ingratiating herself with Middleton for his sake over the acquisition of a new plane (Stack's original vehicle had been destroyed in a crash which also killed Middleton's protégé, Troy Donahue!). After Stack himself perishes in another race and a gloomy luncheon is thrown in his honor, Hudson arranges for Malone and her son to start a new life elsewhere.

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