Watch The Tarnished Angels For Free

I wanted to but couldn't!

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Great for me to see this rarely-scheduled Douglas Sirk melodrama from his rich, late 50's period and it didn't disappoint. Taking as its subject the uncommon lifestyles of the participants in the popular flying-circus entertainments of the 20's and 30's, it's not long before the familiar Sirk themes of conflicting passions, human weakness and sacrifice raise their heads above the parapet.For some reason shot in black and white, perhaps to better enhance the period setting, I still firmly believe that all Sirk's work should be seen in glorious colour, no one filled these CinemaScope screens better than he in the affluent 50's. Only just lasting 90 minutes, it crams a lot into its time-frame, drawing convincing character-sketches of the lead parties, Rock Hudson's maverick journalist, generous of spirit and loquacious but seeking love in the person of the beautiful, sexy Dorothy Malone parachutist extraordinaire, she frustrated by the lack of attention she and her son get from her obsessive pilot husband Robert Stack, who'd rather fly above the clouds than engage with earth-dwellers. Throw in his grease-monkey Jack Carson who may have had a fling with Malone in the past and hangs around as much for the scraps she throws him as his duty to Stack and a Mr Big aircraft-owner with designs of his own on Malone and you have an eternal quadrangle ripe for tragedy.Sure enough, it happens along and spectacularly too, straightening out the lives of the survivors, even if not, I suspect for the better. The acting is first rate, Hudson again showing the depth that Sirk always seemed to draw out of him, handling long-speeches and a drunken scene with ease. Stack again displays his facility for acting against type, playing another emotionally stunted individual masquerading behind his good looks and bravura outlook. Malone however is the epicentre of the movie, the action revolves all around her and it's no wonder with her sexiness and sense of vulnerability, a killer combination for the menfolk here.Sirk's direction is excellent, juxtaposing thrilling action sequences in the air with oddly contrasting backgrounds - it's no coincidence that the drama is played out in New Orleans at Mardi-Gras time, with the use of masks often showing up in foreground and background as a metaphor for the concealed passions on display here. There are several memorable scenes, like when Hudson and Malone's first illicit kiss is disturbed jarringly by a masked party-goer and Stack's adoring son trapped on a fairground airplane-ride just as his father loses control of his real-life plane.So there you have it, another engrossing examination of fallible individuals, expertly purveyed by the best Hollywood director of drama in the 50's. Not as soap-sudsy as some of Sirk's other movies of the period, perhaps due to the literary source of the story, but engrossing from take-off to landing.

This black and white film is surprising. The action takes place in the early 1930s, prohibition still going on, but even so the film is strangely nostalgic of a time that has fully disappeared at the time the film was made. What makes Douglas Sirk so nostalgic about that past he was so fascinated by? Of course it is planes, and flying, and doing all kinds of silly things with these flying machines to dare the devil and to challenge death as if it were possible to challenge that devilish reaper. The second thing that attracts Sirk is the hero this pilot is, a war hero who has reformed himself and retrained himself into being a pilot for fun, a pilot to entertain crowds by taking risks and flying them in mid air, till one day the plane breaks down and the choice is between a simple crash on the funfair next door and a crash into the sea. That's the kind if choice that only dying people, people doomed to die can face and a hero is the one … but you know the answer to that, and rare are those who can do the right thing at such a moment. The third thing that attracts Sirk is the little boy who follows his father the daredevil that flies planes for the fun of others and his mother, the flying acrobat in the air with no net, no string to catch her, just her know how and courage to do what is to be done not to crash on the ground when she loses – on purpose of course – her parachute. The next thing that attracts Sirk is that immeasurable love between these two persons and the devotion a third person, an outsider, a man from the side feels and makes him play the gallant man not to break that couple but to serve the woman in that final drama of hers and to help the child cope with death and death and death again. A beautiful film with the end of a woman who finds the proper footing she needs to be up to raising her son in a treacherous world but in the memory of his father the flying hero.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID

After two undistinguished movies ("Battle Hymn" and "interlude" ),Sirk teamed up again with three actors of the fabulous quartet who made "written on the wind" a classic of the fifties.Robert Stack said once that Sirk was his favorite director and Rock Hudson was never better than with Sirk with whom he made 8 movies,including some of the director's best ("wind" "all that Heaven allows" "magnificent obsession").This one was the last one they made together:it is the gloomiest of them all and its bleak black and white is downright depressing."Tarnished angels" takes place in dark rooms in the darkest night ,and the thought of Death hangs over the whole film: this dead head which suddenly bursts in the bedroom where Hudson is comforting Malone (absolutely stunning) ,the black birds , flying in the sky on the fateful morning,the coffin they carry on a desert airstrip.In Sirk's follow-up,"a time to love and a time to die" Death will be felt everywhere ,not only on the battle fields ,but also in Berlin in ruins: this empty street where there's only a hearse and a horse while the inhabitants are in the shelter is an exact equivalent of the scene of the coffin at dawn.He transcends melodrama with his end-of-the-world pictures .The flaming colors of the cars tearing along the oil wells road or of the clothes in "written on the wind " have given way to gray: old crates , washouts ,forgotten heroes(Stack) ,lost illusions (romantic heroine,a reporter who is always drunk :Hudson's hair is all messed up ,and people who think he was a limited inexpressive actor should watch the scene when he "writes" Stack's epitaph in front of his boss and his colleagues .Dorothy Malone,too,found her two best parts in Sirk's movies before ending up as Sharon Stone's lover in "basic instinct " (her reappearance was the only interest of that flick,at least to my eyes,even if it only were for three or four minutes).We feel that Sirk is missing Zarah Leander ,his German star of the thirties and that,among all the American actresses he worked with,Malone was certainly the one who reminded him the most of his lost chanteuse.Although she won the AA for best suooorting actress for the part of Marylee,her portrayal of LaVerne is subtler,deeper ,less clichéd and more moving . Stack is as good as in "wind" :he could not have a child in the former and there was this genial short scene of a kid riding a clockwork horse ;in the latter there's this sublime sequence of his boy in his little plane when his father's crate is crashing.His character is reminiscent of the heroes of the thirties ,these of " heroes for sale" or " I'm a fugitive from a chain gang" ,people who risked their lives for their country and who got a raw deal afterward .There's a terrifying contrast between the lugubrious atmosphere of the movie and the Mardi Gras festivities;Sirk works with his camera the way a painter does with light ,to create different effects and textures highlights and shadows , recalling sometimes his German era,filming the shadow of the blinds on a face like he used to do in such works as "la Habanera" (1937).Like this?Try this ......"The gypsy moths" ,John Frankenheimer (1969)

In "Tarnished Angels" three men are in love with one woman; each distinctly fails in this love, and yet perhaps more interestingly, each , with possible exception of Roger Schumann, the one certain tarnished angel, comes through too.Laverne Schumann is a woman trapped in her body in a man's world. At 16, she meets Capt. Roger Schumann, the crack flier and war hero (whose image she had seen in a 1918 Liberty Bond Poster), and forgoes her own conventional aspirations in favor of hooking on with his ambition and fame. "Smitten" with her as the Captain may be, and despite his hero's rejection of "flags, confetti" and honor, he remains a warrior when it comes to expressing affection--and his use of Laverne is as natural as flying. Laverne says of the early days "Roger made Jiggs (his mechanic) feel like two cents--me even less." Then when pregnant in 1923, she is subject to the degradation of a dice roll to determine whether Roger or his mechanic should serve as a husband/father. Later, when Roger needs the unattainable Ord plane to compete in a race, she says, in offering herself as procurement, "and who's going to fix Matt Ord?" For Laverne knows her place and knows her worth--she gets 20 bucks for parachuting in a white dress at her hubby's Air Shows. But, underneath, the experience is crushing. She admits to Burt (the reporter), who rescues her from the Ord mission" "No, I mind--each and every nightmare, each and every sin." The plane secured, she says to Burt: "I wish you had not talked me out of it. I would have felt free to walk out on Roger." It can be argued that Jiggs, Roger's crack mechanic, is the closest man to Laverne, closest because his friendship is as convincing as his love. In fact, she reserves her most open and face to face expressions for him. He's quick to stand with her, and remarkably truthful in admitting his failures to do so. When Roger sends his wife to Ord, Jiggs says to him: "I thought you hit rock bottom with that dice game." "What's happened to us?" He turns to Laverne: "What to hell have we done to you?" He includes himself because as he later says to Laverne in her tragic circumstance: "I wish I could tell you I've never done nothing to hurt you but I can't. Me and my lousy pride. I never tried to kill the dirty talk, the dirty lies, not once." And outside the Cafe Mullen, when a grease monkeys baits him: "now you're going to have the luscious Laverne all to yourself," he belts him. But is left totally alone in the night, longing for the man he wanted to kill only a few hours before: "where are you Roger?" (which may explain his timidity in defending Laverne.) Roger Schumann is undoubtedly attached to Laverne. He knew the outcome of the dice roll was as certain as his dependence on Laverne. Unfortunately for his lover, however, attachment is not love, and marriage does not mean the end to his using her for his own ends. This said, he is aware of Laverne's inner and outer strength, and her ability to take on the hardships and risks of the bitterly strange life he had subjected her too. In the Ord affair, he's confident that "she can take care of herself" with his arch enemy. But his avowal of love comes only when faced with a palpable chance of death, and only when his "hunger for flying" is ending--this is when he can he ask Laverne's forgiveness for having used her, and finally utter the words "I love you." Although real and meant, his words may be gaged as questionable, given his pipe dream about an escape to a brand new life after his one final go at the pylons. The "spilling of his crank case oil" (his blood according tot Burt) and his generous flying heroics may have come too late. For his compressed pilot identity, "the man conquered by the flying machine," may have been more of a repudiation of Laverne than he could have imagined.Burt Devlin's love for Laverne is thoughtful and realizable. Burt is a literate crack reporter, with wit, heart, and generosity. He meets the Schumanns through rescuing their son from taunts: "who's you're old man?" And then offers them his place as a crash pad, where he shows up very late to find Laverne immersed in his copy of Willa Cather's "My Antonia." In the press offices the next day he says he spent the night "discussing literature and life with a beautiful half-naked blond." But Burt is perceptive about Roger's use of Laverne: he learns about the dice roll, and witnesses her erotic fall from the sky, and later when he asks her whether Roger suspected an affair between them, she says "Roger's thoughts never come down to earth" to which Burt adds "but they do go into the gutter." But Burt's love for Laverne is contingent on the slow unfolding of their relationship-- he does respect both her and her marriage. But, of course, not enough. For he fails to grasp the bond (of risk, danger, attachment) between Laverne and Roger, and it takes the timely intercession of a Fool to make him realize that his own sense of prowess has trumped his vigilance. But Laverne's angry rejection of him after the accident for having taken advantage of her vulnerable situation seems a bit excessive (perhaps a plot demand). In any case, Laverne soon becomes Burt's Antonia---he asks himself after one of her walkouts "Will I ever see you again, my Antonia?"-- that courageous, independent, vital and now even northwest landscape bound woman, friend--and maybe someday lover. For Burt's airport farewell, in which he lends her his "My Antonia," are: "I want it returned personally."