sovay: (PJ Harvey: crow)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2023-12-02 05:25 pm
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  • Current Music: June Vincent & Dan Duryea, "I Want to Be Talked About"

You're in the swing when nothing daunts you

Tonight on TCM at their usual midnight EST, Noir Alley is premiering Black Angel (1946). Eight years after catching it as half of a Cornell Woolrich double bill at the Brattle Theatre marked the point of no return of my interest in film noir, this picture remains one of my small, shadow-sided, favorite examples. It's full of uneven chances and bittersweet echoes. I wrote about it for my nascent Patreon and then I wrote it a ghost poem. I would cheerfully purchase an EP of its original songs, torchily or catchily attributed to the hard-luck musician played by Dan Duryea in one of his most bruised and romantic roles. June Vincent, Peter Lorre, Constance Dowling, and Wallace Ford fill out the rest of the screen, along with a marvelously tilting bender of a montage. If you can tune in, you should check it out.



(If you cannot tune in, please feel free to resort to the usual suspects of your choice. For the second time this year, I have discovered the Blu-Ray restoration of a favorite movie only after it's already sold out.)
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konstantya: (Default)

[personal profile] konstantya 2023-12-03 05:24 pm (UTC)(link)
Ahh, Black Angel and its ghost marriage. <3 <3 <3 I still find myself periodically coming back to your poem, and I keep thinking it would be neat to write another ficlet or two for the film, but so far no solid ideas have struck. (Though the parallel universe aspect of my last fic for it seems to have taken on a new significance, now that I've been made aware of the parallel universe aspects of Woolrich's I Married a Dead Man when compared to its precursor novella...)

On that note, did you ever get around to reading the original novel (The Black Angel) the film was adapted from? No shade if the answer is no--I still haven't gotten around to either reading or watching Phantom Lady, ahahaha (mostly because I keep getting distracted by Woolrich's shorter works, oops).

On the topic of the soundtrack, someone on tumblr a while ago made an edit of "Heartbreak," turning it into something resembling a full song, that I'm sure you'll appreciate. <3
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