All right. Black Angel (1946). This is the L.A. noir, the gem of Sunday's double feature of female protagonists from novels by Cornell Woolrich. I can't understand how I could have run into noir oddities like Lured (1947) or Mystery Street (1950) and yet never heard of this movie. Like Phantom Lady (1944), it follows the travails of a woman determined to clear a man's name; unlike Phantom Lady, it doesn't fall apart in the third act and features one of the most interesting male-female relationships I've seen in this genre since The Reckless Moment (1949). Peter Lorre doesn't play the most compelling character in it and that's saying something.
June Vincent stars as Cathy Bennett, a self-effacing housewife whose husband was recently convicted of a sensational killing—the strangling of bombshell torch singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling) with her own monogrammed scarf while her signature song "Heartbreak" played over and over in the next room. His wife believes in his innocence. No one else does. Kirk Bennett (John Phillips) was one of Marlowe's many lovers; he was also one of her many blackmail victims. The singer's own maid can place him at the scene of the crime. Even the tolerant police captain has no more time for Cathy after her husband's verdict comes in: "We're three months behind on unsolved homicides now . . . The case is closed, out of my hands. And unless new evidence is discovered, it's going to stay closed." A gossipy insinuation overheard in a studio canteen sends her in the direction of Marlowe's estranged husband Martin Blair, the man who wrote "Heartbreak" for his spellbinding, sultry wife, then crashed into alcoholic obscurity after she left him; he's played by Dan Duryea in a departure from his usual heels and heavies and he really looks like six months straight of lost weekends when he rolls over on his flophouse bed to squint at the woman hovering over him in a flat straw hat, an unflattering plaid jacket, and an expression of daunted determination. Between his hangover and defensiveness, and her eagerness and pity, their first meeting is a mutually wounding disaster. By their second, however, their awkward rapport has begun to move toward active alliance, as Marty puts a corrected assumption together with a monogrammed matchbook, and before long the two of them are posing as a cabaret duo to gain the confidence of mysterious nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre) who might be in possession of some important evidence.1 As an investigative tactic, this imposture could obviously use some work. As a dramatic opportunity for the characters to spend time with another, it pays off for the story big time.
There must be a word for the motif seen in romances or narratives with a strong romantic element where two people who are not yet a couple have to play at marriage for purposes of subterfuge and inevitably it foreshadows the real thing. I think of it as one of the standard screwball progressions; it gets its most famous airing in It Happened One Night (1934), although I think I saw it first in The 39 Steps (1935). When one or both parties are married for real, though—to other people—the outcome becomes less predictable. It's not just the potential for infidelity, although that layers the tension in narratives where monogamy is the assumed and cherished default. There's a real sense of substitution, of doubling. You can see more clearly who isn't there by who is. Cathy and Marty present themselves as business partners rather than a couple, but the echoes are there all the same. They ghost marriage with one another, linked to their absent spouses by familiar patterns and new variations. As "Carver and Martin," held over as headliners at Rio's for the third week in a row, they perform the same roles of singer and accompanist that Mavis adopted professionally with Marty and Cathy for fun with Kirk. It is associated in both cases with an earlier, happier stage of the marriage, when Marty was still sober and successful and Cathy's husband had not yet started cheating. Marty even writes a signature tune for Cathy, just as he wrote one for Mavis; both feature as significant motifs in the soundtrack. Notably, although the songs are voiced from a female perspective, the first accurately reflects the eventual state of Marty's relationship with its singer ("I've much to regret / Finding your arms so thrilling / And finding myself too willing / So what do I get?") while the second makes a more cautious, wistful declaration ("And while I'm in your spell / Will I love wisely or too well? / Who can say? / Time will tell"). Whatever this uncertain intimacy can be called, it's not simply going through the same motions. Cathy and Marty thrive in each other's company, apparently more so than they did with their actual spouses. Despite her initial demurrals, Cathy turns out to have a smoky, low-throated way of putting a song over that blossoms unexpectedly from her self-image as a drab homemaker; as her star rises with Marko, she begins to dress more confidently and flatteringly, her gowns off the shoulder, her hairstyles softened, a square-cut glitter of gems at her wrists and throat. In the meantime, it escapes neither the audience nor Cathy that a sober, conscientious Marty is an attractive prospect, despite being nothing to look at conventionally.2 They dance together, they rehearse, they plan the next stage of their investigation. He brings her flowers and she is never surprised to see him around the house. She takes risks and he worries about her. After a show, they always share a Coca-Cola at the bar.
They double one another, too. As the cheated-on wife, Cathy was an object of pity, but not so much sympathy: her husband was the one who strayed, but she was the one who couldn't hold him, the dowdy housewife outcompeted by the glamour girl.3 Marty wasn't just the cheated-on husband, he was the husband who got kicked out by his wife and collapsed into a bourbon-soaked punch line and kept pining for her anyway while she balled half the guys in Hollywood, earning him the inevitable nickname of "Heartbreak"—he used to play the song in dive bars until he passed out on the keys. Mavis and Kirk are the hardboiled archetypes at the heart of the story, the manipulative mistress and the two-timing man who loved and—allegedly—killed her. Marty and Cathy are the halves left out of this charmed/poisoned circle, the ordinary people on the outside, the ones who weren't loved enough. A romance would put these wounded characters together, let them find wholeness in one another. Black Angel does, but not equally and not for long.
Proceed at your own risk from here on. The stuff that really interests me requires the rest of the plot. ( I thought your association was strictly professional. )
I have little interest in reading the Woolrich novel on which it's based, The Black Angel (1943), because by all accounts it sounds about four times more misogynist than the movie: the protagonist is the eponymous black angel, destroying each man she meets in her desperate, oblivious efforts to save her husband. The film's bittersweet ending does make it possible to read in this fashion, but because the collateral damage of Cathy's quest is greatly decreased from the book—and the responsibility crucially redistributed—it is just as persuasive to consider Marty in this deceptively attractive light, or even beautiful, blackmailing Mavis. The screenwriter responsible was Roy Chanslor, none of whose other movies look familiar to me, although he wrote the novels later adapted into Johnny Guitar (1954) and Cat Ballou (1965). The film itself was the last project of Roy William Neill, best known for directing all but one of Universal's Sherlock Holmes series. It's tight at 81 minutes without feeling crammed; stylistically, it mostly confines itself to realistic compositions with the occasional slatted shadow or plate-glass reversal, but its expressionist breakout packs a punch when it arrives. The songs are convincing and catchy. Lorre is delightful. Vincent and Duryea and their mismatched chemistry anchor the picture.4 Woolrich famously hated it and I am delighted to report that it appears to be readily available on DVD. This flashback brought to you by my musically minded backers at Patreon.
1. The key to the murder is a heart-shaped ruby brooch, a spurned gift from Marty that Kirk swore he saw pinned on Mavis' breast when he discovered her body, conspicuously missing a few moments later. Finding it on any other person will link them to the crime scene and earn him a reprieve from the gas chamber.
2. He really isn't, although it doesn't stop him from being great to look at. Duryea has one of those lanky, flat-angled faces, with a mulish set to the jaw; he sneers easily, which means that watching Marty's gentleness emerge from his bruised, hungover cynicism is as nice a surprise as Cathy's hitherto undiscovered facility for siren song. The character brilliantines his hair severely, which in his drunk scenes gives him a look I haven't seen much outside of manga: disheveled and bed-headed, he looks like a sardonic dandelion.
3. Even Marty makes a crack about it, right after she's woken him up that first inopportune morning: "Mrs. Kirk Bennett. So you're the one he left sitting at home." The fact that he apologizes for it almost as soon as they see each other again is one of his first signs of sensitivity. I feel it may also be relevant that the first Carver and Martin song, performed in full at their audition for Marko, is an arch number called "I Want to Be Talked About" in which the narrator breezily boasts, "Sticks and stones won't break my bones and names will bring me fame / A man in the hand is worth two in the arms of some other dame." The Mavis Marlowe murder case was a front-page spectacle; nobody's private lives stayed that way. Putting a jaunty spin on it—as they perform incognito—might well do both of them good.
4. I had never seen Vincent before, although I note that two of her early roles are in musicals. I thought I hadn't seen Duryea, either, but IMDb informs me that it's just that I've seen him in two other roles against type: a wry tank gunner in Sahara (1943), making endless trivial bets with Humphrey Bogart to cover the stress of the North African war, and the mild-mannered company accountant who names the eponymous aircraft in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). IMDb also seems to believe that he did his own piano playing in Black Angel, which if true is pretty cool.
June Vincent stars as Cathy Bennett, a self-effacing housewife whose husband was recently convicted of a sensational killing—the strangling of bombshell torch singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling) with her own monogrammed scarf while her signature song "Heartbreak" played over and over in the next room. His wife believes in his innocence. No one else does. Kirk Bennett (John Phillips) was one of Marlowe's many lovers; he was also one of her many blackmail victims. The singer's own maid can place him at the scene of the crime. Even the tolerant police captain has no more time for Cathy after her husband's verdict comes in: "We're three months behind on unsolved homicides now . . . The case is closed, out of my hands. And unless new evidence is discovered, it's going to stay closed." A gossipy insinuation overheard in a studio canteen sends her in the direction of Marlowe's estranged husband Martin Blair, the man who wrote "Heartbreak" for his spellbinding, sultry wife, then crashed into alcoholic obscurity after she left him; he's played by Dan Duryea in a departure from his usual heels and heavies and he really looks like six months straight of lost weekends when he rolls over on his flophouse bed to squint at the woman hovering over him in a flat straw hat, an unflattering plaid jacket, and an expression of daunted determination. Between his hangover and defensiveness, and her eagerness and pity, their first meeting is a mutually wounding disaster. By their second, however, their awkward rapport has begun to move toward active alliance, as Marty puts a corrected assumption together with a monogrammed matchbook, and before long the two of them are posing as a cabaret duo to gain the confidence of mysterious nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre) who might be in possession of some important evidence.1 As an investigative tactic, this imposture could obviously use some work. As a dramatic opportunity for the characters to spend time with another, it pays off for the story big time.
There must be a word for the motif seen in romances or narratives with a strong romantic element where two people who are not yet a couple have to play at marriage for purposes of subterfuge and inevitably it foreshadows the real thing. I think of it as one of the standard screwball progressions; it gets its most famous airing in It Happened One Night (1934), although I think I saw it first in The 39 Steps (1935). When one or both parties are married for real, though—to other people—the outcome becomes less predictable. It's not just the potential for infidelity, although that layers the tension in narratives where monogamy is the assumed and cherished default. There's a real sense of substitution, of doubling. You can see more clearly who isn't there by who is. Cathy and Marty present themselves as business partners rather than a couple, but the echoes are there all the same. They ghost marriage with one another, linked to their absent spouses by familiar patterns and new variations. As "Carver and Martin," held over as headliners at Rio's for the third week in a row, they perform the same roles of singer and accompanist that Mavis adopted professionally with Marty and Cathy for fun with Kirk. It is associated in both cases with an earlier, happier stage of the marriage, when Marty was still sober and successful and Cathy's husband had not yet started cheating. Marty even writes a signature tune for Cathy, just as he wrote one for Mavis; both feature as significant motifs in the soundtrack. Notably, although the songs are voiced from a female perspective, the first accurately reflects the eventual state of Marty's relationship with its singer ("I've much to regret / Finding your arms so thrilling / And finding myself too willing / So what do I get?") while the second makes a more cautious, wistful declaration ("And while I'm in your spell / Will I love wisely or too well? / Who can say? / Time will tell"). Whatever this uncertain intimacy can be called, it's not simply going through the same motions. Cathy and Marty thrive in each other's company, apparently more so than they did with their actual spouses. Despite her initial demurrals, Cathy turns out to have a smoky, low-throated way of putting a song over that blossoms unexpectedly from her self-image as a drab homemaker; as her star rises with Marko, she begins to dress more confidently and flatteringly, her gowns off the shoulder, her hairstyles softened, a square-cut glitter of gems at her wrists and throat. In the meantime, it escapes neither the audience nor Cathy that a sober, conscientious Marty is an attractive prospect, despite being nothing to look at conventionally.2 They dance together, they rehearse, they plan the next stage of their investigation. He brings her flowers and she is never surprised to see him around the house. She takes risks and he worries about her. After a show, they always share a Coca-Cola at the bar.
They double one another, too. As the cheated-on wife, Cathy was an object of pity, but not so much sympathy: her husband was the one who strayed, but she was the one who couldn't hold him, the dowdy housewife outcompeted by the glamour girl.3 Marty wasn't just the cheated-on husband, he was the husband who got kicked out by his wife and collapsed into a bourbon-soaked punch line and kept pining for her anyway while she balled half the guys in Hollywood, earning him the inevitable nickname of "Heartbreak"—he used to play the song in dive bars until he passed out on the keys. Mavis and Kirk are the hardboiled archetypes at the heart of the story, the manipulative mistress and the two-timing man who loved and—allegedly—killed her. Marty and Cathy are the halves left out of this charmed/poisoned circle, the ordinary people on the outside, the ones who weren't loved enough. A romance would put these wounded characters together, let them find wholeness in one another. Black Angel does, but not equally and not for long.
Proceed at your own risk from here on. The stuff that really interests me requires the rest of the plot. ( I thought your association was strictly professional. )
I have little interest in reading the Woolrich novel on which it's based, The Black Angel (1943), because by all accounts it sounds about four times more misogynist than the movie: the protagonist is the eponymous black angel, destroying each man she meets in her desperate, oblivious efforts to save her husband. The film's bittersweet ending does make it possible to read in this fashion, but because the collateral damage of Cathy's quest is greatly decreased from the book—and the responsibility crucially redistributed—it is just as persuasive to consider Marty in this deceptively attractive light, or even beautiful, blackmailing Mavis. The screenwriter responsible was Roy Chanslor, none of whose other movies look familiar to me, although he wrote the novels later adapted into Johnny Guitar (1954) and Cat Ballou (1965). The film itself was the last project of Roy William Neill, best known for directing all but one of Universal's Sherlock Holmes series. It's tight at 81 minutes without feeling crammed; stylistically, it mostly confines itself to realistic compositions with the occasional slatted shadow or plate-glass reversal, but its expressionist breakout packs a punch when it arrives. The songs are convincing and catchy. Lorre is delightful. Vincent and Duryea and their mismatched chemistry anchor the picture.4 Woolrich famously hated it and I am delighted to report that it appears to be readily available on DVD. This flashback brought to you by my musically minded backers at Patreon.
1. The key to the murder is a heart-shaped ruby brooch, a spurned gift from Marty that Kirk swore he saw pinned on Mavis' breast when he discovered her body, conspicuously missing a few moments later. Finding it on any other person will link them to the crime scene and earn him a reprieve from the gas chamber.
2. He really isn't, although it doesn't stop him from being great to look at. Duryea has one of those lanky, flat-angled faces, with a mulish set to the jaw; he sneers easily, which means that watching Marty's gentleness emerge from his bruised, hungover cynicism is as nice a surprise as Cathy's hitherto undiscovered facility for siren song. The character brilliantines his hair severely, which in his drunk scenes gives him a look I haven't seen much outside of manga: disheveled and bed-headed, he looks like a sardonic dandelion.
3. Even Marty makes a crack about it, right after she's woken him up that first inopportune morning: "Mrs. Kirk Bennett. So you're the one he left sitting at home." The fact that he apologizes for it almost as soon as they see each other again is one of his first signs of sensitivity. I feel it may also be relevant that the first Carver and Martin song, performed in full at their audition for Marko, is an arch number called "I Want to Be Talked About" in which the narrator breezily boasts, "Sticks and stones won't break my bones and names will bring me fame / A man in the hand is worth two in the arms of some other dame." The Mavis Marlowe murder case was a front-page spectacle; nobody's private lives stayed that way. Putting a jaunty spin on it—as they perform incognito—might well do both of them good.
4. I had never seen Vincent before, although I note that two of her early roles are in musicals. I thought I hadn't seen Duryea, either, but IMDb informs me that it's just that I've seen him in two other roles against type: a wry tank gunner in Sahara (1943), making endless trivial bets with Humphrey Bogart to cover the stress of the North African war, and the mild-mannered company accountant who names the eponymous aircraft in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). IMDb also seems to believe that he did his own piano playing in Black Angel, which if true is pretty cool.
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