Sorry about the politics last night. I don't like to go on tirades like that, but in this case I felt I had to say something. Maybe tomorrow we will know more and the picture will be a little clearer. At any rate, I did watch a movie tonight, "The Tarnished Angels" (1957), directed by Douglas Sirk from a book by William Faulkner. Now there is a recipe for double-barreled drama if ever there was one! Sirk, that most sweeping explorer of romantic tragedy, and Faulkner the psychoanalyst of the Depression-era South. You can practically see the melodrama dripping off the screen before the movie even starts.
But this is a slightly different story than you might imagine from either man, because it has to do with airplanes. The year is 1932, we are in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. An airshow is set to take place at a local field. Popular at the time were air races, where pilots would make laps around a set of tall pylons, spaced at even distances around an oval course, much like an auto tracetrack, but in the air. This was in the era when airplanes were becoming faster and more aerodynamic, just before the major advancements in the 1940s.
Robert Stack is former WW1 hero who is now a racing pilot. His wife (Dorothy Malone) is his sidekick, a parachute jumper. This is the Depression, and they perform for little money, peanuts basically, and are forced to stay in whatever accommodations the local promoter provides, which are often slummy and substandard.
Angst and Existentialism are the keys to the plot. Stack has yearned to fly since he was a boy, born into the new world of the Wright Brothers. He becomes an ace in the war, but his notoriety is gained by killing - shooting down German pilots. Now, fifteen years later he is an emotional shell, living only for the next air race, living in a cheap, carnival atmosphere and ignoring the wife who loves him but who wants out and is already looking elsewhere. The couple also have a nine year old son, who is rumored to be the biological offspring of Stack's expert mechanic, whom he trusts with his life every time he flies. The flight mechanic, played by Jack Carson, is also clearly in love with Dorothy Malone. He makes no bones about it, and he may have fathered the child in a one night stand, but he is not the romantic type, more of a blue collar grease monkey.
You can see that we have an overwrought emotional mess in the making!
Enter Rock Hudson, who would probably overtake H.Bruce Humberstone in the Great Hollywood Names sweepstakes. Hudson is a newspaperman for the New Orleans Picayune. He is also an alcoholic (probably a stand-in for Faulkner), but he is damn good with words and now he is looking for a human interest story. With the air show in town, he chooses to tell the tale of Robert Stack, the former War Hero now reduced to flying barnstorm gigs for pocket money.
The movie is now Hudson's. He takes over with a feigned gallantry masking arrogance as he tries to juggle three balls at once : his desire to engage Stack for a newspaper story, his greater desire for Stack's wife Dorothy Malone (who also has the mechanic lusting after her), and his attempt to back away from the romantic aspect of the situation and simply use his power as a reporter to help this family, which includes a young child. After all his other motivations have been exhausted, his conscience catches up to him. Hudson is remembered in Hollywood mythology as the ultimate handsome Movie Star (and the first to die of AIDs), but in fact he was a very good actor.
He worked indeed in the mold of Movie Star, but watch his performances in a variety of roles, from melodrama to sci-fi, to war movies to comedy. He had a fair amount of the talent of someone like Cary Grant, and he gives a Faulkner-penned speech at the end of "The Tarnished Angels" that is Shakespearean in it's content and delivery.
His speech, made in front of his boss and colleagues at his newspaper, lays bare the reasons why a man would wish to fly, above all else, in the first place. Again, the story was written in the early days of airplanes, but Faulkner uses flight as a device to contemplate the restlessness of the soul of a person who has confronted nothingness. All Robert Stack had ever wanted to do was fly, since he was a child, and when he got his chance to do so, he became a great pilot who killed other pilots. This is his existential dilemma. Now he races planes in decrepit contests, because it is all he has left to do.
And his wife Dorothy Malone is ignored, yet expected to carry his emotional baggage, while also performing dangerous parachute jumps, and she has an illegitimate son.
"Calling Sigmund Freud"! (Hello, Dr. Freud?.....I've got Mr. Faulkner on the line).
Well anyway, you get the picture. Rock Hudson inserts himself into the middle of this mess, just so he can sell a story. He soon makes matters worse by his intrusion, but his sense of morality leads him to try and fix things......even when it may be too late. ////
"The Tarnished Angels" is shot in incredible b&w, in Cinemascope, with the spectacle of Mardi Gras as a backdrop, in all it's uninhibited glory.
Tremendous acting all around (of the Method school), with great performances by Malone and Hudson especially. Two Very Big Thumbs Up, then, for "The Tarnished Angels". Look for it in Douglas Sirk's catalogue, and watch every film you can get your hands on by this most emotive of American directors. I have left out many of the plot points of the film (which involve the air races and the romantic alignments) in order to focus on the psychology, but that's the point with Sirk in the first place. The movie is highly recommended. ////
That's all I know for tonight, more or less. I am reading my books and working on my latest drawing. All of my drawings this year will be representational, of the topic of 1989, and all will be sketched first in pencil and then filled in with Prismacolors. This will be some definitive stuff, no holds barred, gonna show what really happened. I am three drawings in, hoping to complete 12 to 18 by year's end.
See you in church in the morning for good singing. Much love through the night until then.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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