Black Angel: Second Look

 

 

 

 

BLACK ANGEL (1946)

Directed by Roy William Neil

Universal Pictures, 81 minutes, Not Rated.

★★★★

 

I keep a careful list of movies I’ve seen. Or so I thought until I borrowed Black Angel again on Monday. Because I was an idiot, I thought I’d watch it again and I liked it better this time. Here’s a slightly altered review from an earlier post.

 

Black Angel was considered a second-tier film noir, though its reputation has trended upward and is now viewed an underappreciated classic. “Classic” might be a tad grandiose, but it’s worth 81 minutes of your time.

 

It’s one of those did-he-or-didn’t-he movies that will leave you guessing until the very end. Catherine Bennett (June Vincent) is married to Kirk (John Phillips). He’ burning the candle at both ends with such heat that he is being blackmailed by his blonde bombshell mistress, nightclub singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). Marlowe is two- or three-timing her estranged alcoholic husband, songwriter Martin Blair (Dan Duryea) who mopes outside of her apartment.

 

Things go considerably more than wrong when Kirk shows up and finds Marlow dead in her bedroom. Like the sap he is, he touches things in her swanky apartment, including a gun on Marlowe’s bed. Kirk is arrested for the slaying and the evidence is airtight. Catharine knows that her hubby done her wrong (as thugs might say), but she doesn’t believe him capable of homicide. Because justice moved faster in those days, Kirk is quickly convicted, and if Catharine she doesn’t clear his name, Kirk ‘s last breath will be in the gas chamber.

 

So, who else would you enlist to help you find the “real” killer other than Martin, a hopeless boozer so pathetic that he needs a keeper/friend Joe (Wallace Ford) to pick him up off the street and tuck him into his flop house bed. Marty’s cynical about most things, but he has a soft spot for Cathy’s sob story. Or is it the shapeliness of her legs and her décolletage? The cops don’t want to help, as they have Kirk dead to rights. Captain Flood (Broderick Crawford) tells Cathy that, though sympathetic, he’s heard sob stories like hers before.  

 

Martin, though, saw another man coming out of Marlowe’s building. The more he and Cathy investigate, the more they believe that Marko (Peter Lorre), a former thug turned nightclub owner, killed Marlowe. Marty doesn’t stick his neck out for anybody, but he doesn’t have much to lose and the more time he spends with Cathy the more he finds himself falling for her. What ensues is a cat-and-mouse story that hinges on a brooch. 

 

Both June Vincent and Constance Dowling–both successful models– were knockouts. Then we have two guys born for the roles they played. Crawford as a flatfoot? The man made his future living playing one (TV’s Highway Patrol) and was always convincing in doing so. Of course, there’s Peter Lorre, who is like a ferret-come-to-life and as furtive as one. (Would you trust Peter Lorre?) Dan Duryea is also superb. He was a malleable actor who excelled at playing world-weary losers as he does in this film. He was equally adroit as a chiseler, a cowboy, a romantic lead, and a dancer.

 

Now for the head-scratching stuff. If you were trying to prove that a wise guy was guilty of a murder, would you form a lounge act? Marty can tickle the ivories and Cathy can pass as a sultry torch singer. Now all Cathy has to do is get the act booked at Marko’s club, catch Marko’s eye, gain his confidence, and find evidence without being fingered herself. Her motive is odd. We can sympathize with her desire not to see an innocent man die–if Kirk is indeed innocent–but what’s with her professions of love for the man who jilted her? At some point, we also wonder about Marty’s dangerous subterfuge. He’s physically attracted to Cathy, but all he can foresee is that he’ll be left in the lurch if Kirk is sprung.

 

Some 81-minute films are taut. In this case, more background into the evolving relationship between Catharine and Martin would help the ending make more sense. Blame the film’s shortcomings on holes in Roy Chanslor’s script, not Roy Wiliam Neill’s direction. Black Angel is often stylish and it holds together, but not brilliantly so. Call Black Angel a B-level noir with lead performances that make it a B+.

 

Rob Weir

 

Lascaux: Amazing and Frustrating

 

 

 

Perhaps you’ve heard this story before. In 1940, 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat was walking his dog near the village of Montignac, France. The pooch found an uprooted tree that proved to be the entrance to a cave. Ravidat returned with three teen-aged
friends and scrambled some fifty feet underground into a chamber filled with ancient art.  That alone wasn’t all that remarkable; the Dordogne Valley was filled with caves and quite a few of them have prehistoric paintings on their walls and ceilings. We explored such a remarkable small cave in Cougnac the previous week. But the cave in Lascaux surpassed anything found before. There were more than 600 paintings and etchings made 17,000-22,000 years ago. Most were of animals–aurochs, bison, bovines, large cats, deer, horses, rhinos–plus several mysterious figures, including indecipherable geometric designs and a human figure with a bird-like head and an erect phallus.

 

Lascaux was open to the public from 1948 to 1963, when it was closed to the public because the breath of visitors caused mold and other visible damage to the paintings. UNESCO listed it as a world heritage site in 1979, which prompted the French government to display a travelling replica of one hall, which was dubbed Lascaux II. Lascaux III expanded upon Lascaux II, but in 2016 Lascaux IV opened on site, a full 3-D recreation of the entire cave. No, you can’t see exactly what Ravidat and his friends saw in 1940, but the recreation is so well done that you can imagine their amazement. It looks and feels like a cave, unless you accidentally brush a stalagmite and feel its synthetic surface. It’s a great way to preserve the original cave from further damage and is better lighted than “authentic” caves.

 

That’s the good news; now for the bad. Lascaux is a guided tour that is designed to give visitors information in their native languages. It’s also designed to shuffle as many people as possible through the cave as quickly as possible. Read: No dawdling. You are then ushered into a corridor with four theaters spotlighting various aspects of Lascaux from discovery to preservation to ongoing scientific studies. The films are well done, but chances are that if you are with a tour group you won’t get to see more than ¾ of one of them before your guide hustles you into a gift shop selling all manner of tchotchkes such as horse stuffies and coloring books to keychains, picture books, postcards, and garish t-shirts. Frankly, I found the touring experience so frustrating and distasteful that I began to identify with cave paintings of herds of buffalo.

 

At the end of the proverbial day you will come away with more appreciation for the skill of ancient artists, but probably no wiser on what it all meant. For instance, one theory that is mostly discredited by the visual evidence is that the ancients used the images as a form of imitative magic; that is, hunters threw spears at them in hopes that a magic force (called mana) would inhabit those spears in a real hunt. A relative lack of chipping on the rocks makes that less likely. Those figures strongly suggest that the art is the point. But the why is left up in the air. Why Lascaux? Was it a ritual or religious center? What’s the current theory on who made these images? Explanations of “early man” tell us little. Does that mean homo sapiens or Neanderthal sapiens? (The latter is probably more likely, but not a particularly strong marketing piece!) Could Lascaux have been little more than an ancient art gallery? A school for making art?

 

I suppose that, for me, I wondered why there was so much effort to effort to convince us of the quality of the art. We can see that it is expertly done given the imprecision of available tools. What’s wrong with admitting that Lascaux remains cloaked in mystery? Or at least highlighting competing theories. There are other ancient sites–Skara Brae and Stonehenge come to mind–where ambiguity and uncertainty are embraced. I think also of the pyramids of Giza, where periodic new finds put the sites back in the news. In short, Lascaux IV is a nice job of re-creation, but falls short in presentation. If I ever return to the Périgord, I shall seek out smaller caves to avoid both the crowds and what feels perilously close to Disneyfication of ancient history.

 

Rob Weir

The Coast Road a Fine Gift Idea

 

 

 

The Coast Road (2014)

By Alan Murrin

Harper Via, 305 pages.

★★★★

 

If you have someone of Irish ancestry on your Christmas list who is a reader, The Coast Road is a quiet powerhouse that explores changing mores in Donegal. First, though, a few things need to be cleared up. This debut work from by Alan Murrin was shortlisted for a Queer Fiction prize in Ireland. This will strike many North Americans as odd, as there are no gay characters. The designation comes from the manner in which the three women at its heart violate the patriarchal norms of 1994. That date is significant as the very next year, voters went to the polls and overwhelmingly approved a referendum that legalized divorce. That vote began to loosen the iron grip upon morality held by the Roman Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland.

 

A second confusing oddity is that the novel is set in a small fishing village named Ardglas. There is no such coastal town in Donegal, though there is one in County Down in neighboring Northern Ireland named Ardglass!

 

At the novel’s core are three women trapped by tradition. It is a matter for debate if the book’s tragic character, Colette Crowley, is the catalyst for discontent, or merely the leading edge of a coming tidal wave of social change. Collette is married to Shaun with whom she has three sons. Shaun is an abusive lout, but and Collette retains enough allure and self-respect that she takes up with a married man. When that relationship dissolves, Shaun denies Collette access to her children or any financial support–all within his legal rights. This sends Collette skedaddling back to her native village in Donegal. There she rents a cottage from Dolores and Donal Mullen. They have three children and another on the way, quite a burden on stay-at-home housewife Dolores, who feels they need the extra income. Donal, though, is as traditional as Shaun and thinks Collette is trouble (though he notes that she’s quite a looker).

 

Collette has been away for many years and fancies herself a poet; most villagers see her as a free-spirited bohemian who has led a scandalous life. When Collette offers writing lessons at the community centre, those few who sign up are baffled by what a writer actually does. That is, all but bored housewife Izzy Keaveney, a mother of two. She once owned a flower shop in the village but her husband James sold it out from under her when he decided to become a politician and gave priority to appearances rather than his wife’s happiness. James views Collette as a whore and forbids Izzy from associating with her, though the two haven’t communicated much in several decades. She ignores his command. Prior to Collette’s arrival, Father Brian Dempsey was Izzy’s only real friend.

 

To cut to the chase, we have three unhappy women married to men who believe that toxic masculinity is their birthright. From the standpoint of the hidebound culture of 1994 Ireland, they’re not entirely wrong. Male alcoholism and a mistress on the side are commonplace, with women expected to take care of children and perform domestic duties. Ardglas, though, is a village where people gossip about things they know and think they know. It is, however, true that a steady stream of “visitors” call upon Collette, including James and Donal. It is likewise true that women are beginning to push back, albeit in sneaky ways. Izzy, for example, takes Collette on out-of-town “shopping” excursions where she clandestinely sees one or more of her sons.

 

The problem with secrets is that they have a distressing tendency to become known. Ardglas is about to become a battleground for the battle of the sexes. Even if you think you know how that turned out, it’s always a good idea to remember that battles produce casualties of all sorts: literal, emotional, social, and psychological. Murrin perhaps telegraphs the damages more than he should, but The Coast Road is remarkably mature as a first novel. Murrin does a first-rate job in getting inside the logic of his main characters and of spinning a strongly plotted tale. Perhaps best of all, though his prose isn’t showy, it is evocative and emotive. The Coast Road makes a fine gift to be sure, to be sure.

 

Rob Weir