The Tarnished Angels

New Orleans in the 1930s. A newspaperman attaches himself to a troupe of stunt fliers who have come to town. Roger Shumann is a man who never came home from the war; he knows nothing but flying. His wife LaVerne jumps with a parachute, their mechanic Jiggs keeps the outfit standing, and who the boy's father is remains unclear. The subject is not the air race but a group of people who belong nowhere. All three are bound to each other and none of them chose the others; Shumann has drifted far enough to put his wife up for the sake of an aeroplane. The form breaks with the colour melodramas Sirk is known for: black and white, in wide screen. Carnival crowds, shadows and poles keep dividing the frame, and people are almost never alone in a shot. The source is William Faulkner's novel Pylon. Douglas Sirk used to name this as his own favourite among his films, though it failed commercially and was not taken seriously at the time. Rock Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone had appeared together the year before in Sirk's Written on the Wind. Who it is for: viewers who like melodrama and Sirk's formal rigour. Who it is not for: anyone expecting heroism; none of these characters is saved and the film does nothing to soften its ending.