Black Angel is a 1946 B-Noir, directed by Roy William Neill and based on a Cornell Woolrich novel. Woolrich apparently disliked the film; the script veers quite a bit from the novel, save for the atmospheric twist ending. While it is not among the very greatest noirs, it comes smack in the middle of the classic 40's cycle and so doesn't present the rehashed feel that some early 50s noirs do (I must say I like the 40's noirs the best, as they are visually more stylish: more shadows, hulking cars, more walk-up tenements.)



is not very stylized in this way, however; cinematographer Paul Ivano does a competent job, particularly in the opening sequence and in his dynamic camera angles in the nightclub scenes; there are several close-ups, especially of Dan Duryea while drunk or hallucinating, that are very well done. That said, the ultimate payoff of an evening spent watching Black Angel his to be found in the ensemble cast.

Marty Blair (Dan Duryea) and Catherine Bennett (June Vincent) team up to solve the murder of Marty's ex-wife, Mavis Marlowe (now there's a noir name!) who as our token chanteuse fatale gets one bitchy scene and is then summarily dispatched in the name of plot establishment. It turns out that Catherine's husband, Kirk Bennett (the forgettable, downtrodden John Phillips) was having an affair with Mavis and was seen entering her apartment just before her death. Marty, an alcoholic piano player who wants Mavis back (or let's just say, he can't get her out of his mind...) also makes an appearance at her building the same night. When the cops haul Kirk off to death row for Mavis' murder, Catherine tracks down Marty, suspecting he knows something, and the countdown is on to find the real killer before pathetic adulterer Kirk gets the chair.



Marty's alcoholic blackout precludes him from remembering anything about the night of Mavis' murder, and his alibi is that he was unconscious in bed, sleeping one off after after getting booted from Mavis' building by the doorman. He agrees to help Catherine track down a brooch he gave to Mavis and which is conspicuously absent from her apartment. They reason that if they find the brooch, they find the killer.

Since Mavis was last employed at Rio's, a nightclub run by sleazy Marko (Peter Lorre), they go undercover as a musical pair and get hired to headline at Marko's joint. But as the death row deadline approaches, their leads pan out after a surprising confrontation with Marko and then Marty begins to remember what happened during his bender the night Mavis was killed...

The best thing about Black Angel is undoubtedly Dan Duryea. He plays against type as an ill-fated and very sympathetic piano-playing drunk. His flophouse associates all mother him through his drunken stupors. Duryea in 1946 was already well known as an on-screen brute due to his sinister turns in Fritz Lang's films The Woman In The Window and Scarlet Street. But as noted by Eddie Muller, Universal tried to use Black Angel as a way for Duryea to escape being typecast: the promotional material for the film emphasized the point that Dan doesn't lay a finger on June Vincent.



Vincent starts out slow and not very interesting, but gets better by the minute. You can play this game: watch how her outfits change throughout the film. In the beginning, she's a homely housewife defending her cad husband. She wears a houndstooth two-piece suit through much of the first half of the film that recalls the cringeworthy fashion in The Big Sleep that necessitated a Bacall re-shoot. Once the Marko club gig is on, however, she's all ball gowns and silk, and her acting seems to improve as well.

Her first confrontation with Peter Lorre is arguably her best moment, when he invites her to his office (ostensibly to gift her a brooch as reward for the good publicity brought to the club by her headline act). Terrified that he might be onto her, and with tears in her eyes matched only by the glitter of her copious jewelry, Vincent is absolutely convincing as a woman in over her head. the scene ends as Lorre's Marko pulls out a bottle of champagne saved just for a "special occasion" and we are left with the lingering suggestion of sex to come.

Other curiosities: Broderick Crawford stars here as Captain Flood, an extremely laid-back police detective who is (intermittently) willing to check up on Catherine and Marty's leads: his dry humor is entertaining. Freddie Steele as Marko's dim-witted thug manager Lucky plays his role at on the razor's edge of obtuse caricature, and is hilarious.

The murdered fatale Mavis is played by Constance Dowling, whose real life was more noir than this film: she had a much-publicized relationship with Italian author Cesare Pavese, who committed suicide after she dumped him. She is used to greater (or at least lengthier) advantage in two other B-noirs: Blind Spot and The Flame, both from 1947. Director Roy William Neill, known today primarily for his Sherlock Holmes pictures, was another victim of the noir curse: retiring to England after completing Black Angel, he set foot in his new home and promptly collapsed and died from a heart attack. He was just 59 years old.