Who is the Black Angel?
Black Angel (1946), dir. Roy William Neill, w/ Dan Duryea (Martin Blair), Julie Vincent (Catherine Bennett), Peter Lorre (Marko), Broderick Crawford (Capt. Flood)
Martin Blair was a successful songwriter whose wife (his muse) has left him. When the film begins, he hopes to see her, though they have been separated for quite some time. She jilts him again, and he goes on a drunken tear. And then she ends up dead. His chief rival is a man, Kirk Bennett, who comes to see her, and finds her dead. He hears someone else moving about in the apartment but does not see him, and finds himself charged with murder. Bennett’s wife convinces Blair, who had seen another man entering the apartment building as he left, to help her clear her husband. Blair falls in love with Catherine, but the man he thought had killed his wife proves to have an alibi. Just before Bennett is to be executed, Blair discovers the truth — will he be able to convince the authorities in time?
This film noir is well made, but I couldn’t get past Dan Duryea, who looks like an adult Henry Aldrich, or like a fair-haired Shemp — I couldn’t see why any woman would be interested in him, and found that I didn’t care much what happened to him. Julie Vincent is more interesting as Catherine, but there is something about her performance that seems even cooler than Veronica Lake — talk about a riddle wrapped up in an enigma. The final segments of the film are quite interesting, but I couldn’t help feeling that we were making time before that.
And who is the B lack Angel? Is it Blair’s wife? Is it Bennett? Just don’t know.
