Black Angel Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.5

Black Angel Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 25, 2019

Roy William Neill amassed well over one hundred credits as a director in a career that spanned several decades going back to the silent era, and yet chances are if people recognize his name at all (which could be questionable to begin with), it’s probably going to be due to either his association with several of the Sherlock Holmes films which starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, or perhaps his helming of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. In a career that obviously lasted a good, long while but which perhaps never really penetrated into the public consciousness or (more importantly) Hollywood’s all important “A list”, Neill closed things out in 1946 with Black Angel, a rather interesting film noir which has a few visual flourishes and a kind of nice and twisty plot. Dan Duryea, then noted for his portrayal of so-called “heels”, is on hand as Martin Blair, a once promising songwriter and piano player who has become rather dissolute and prone to drunkenness, especially after the failure of his marriage to popular singer Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). When Mavis shows up dead, in just the first of some rather interesting detours the story takes, it’s not Martin who’s on the hot seat, but a seemingly tangential character named Kirk Bennett (John Phillips), who was, it is soon revealed, the victim of a blackmail scheme on the part of Mavis, and who is suspected, and ultimately convicted, of her murder due to that fact. Kirk’s wife Catherine (June Vincent) is convinced of her husband’s innocence (of course), and in doing a bit of sleuthing on her own, ends up partnering with Martin to try to ferret out who the real murderer is.

Black Angel manages to turn a number of noir tropes pretty much squarely on their heads, beginning with the fact that the focal hero of the piece is not some initially stalwart male led down a path of moral turpitude by some hot blonde, but instead a soused pianist who blew whatever chance he may have had once both professionally and personally, and is at the very least emotionally wounded as the film begins. That said, there’s an arguably even more interesting play on norms with regard to the supposed femme fatale, Mavis, since she ends up dead pretty early in the story. It does turn out that Mavis, kind of like her ex, has become a morally ambiguous, and maybe outright villainous, person, as events ultimately reveal she had been blackmailing more than one person (and that’s about as close to a spoiler as you’ll see in this review).

The "nice girl" in this story, Catherine, arguably could have been a femme fatale in another noir, since she's obviously beautiful, blonde, and, once she teams up with Martin, proven to be rather wily at times. The kind of interesting third way Black Angel riffs on what might have even in 1946 been some expected plot developments is to have Martin fall for Catherine, even as he's attempting to help her prove her husband's innocence. That provides a kind of slightly sleazy subtext that Duryea brings quite viscerally, if also surprisingly vulnerably, to life. Peter Lorre is on hand as a typically smarmy club owner whom Martin and Catherine suspect of being involved in Mavis' death and Broderick Crawford is the kind of stalwart cop trying to piece things together, albeit kind of as a follow up to the main detective work by Martin and Catherine.

One way that Black Angel really can't escape the very era from which it sprang, and which is perhaps almost ironically the heyday of often envelope pushing noir entries, is how it manages to solve both the murder and the kind of weird but unstated ménage à trois that develops between Martin, Catherine and Kirk, providing a bit of what might be termed "production code comeuppance" so that all is right in the universe as the film ends. Also ironically, according to some of the supplements included on this disc, the wrap up is one of the few ways that Roy Chanslor's adaptive screenplay followed the lead of Cornell Woolrich's source novel. That may have been cold comfort for Woolrich, who, according to the same supplements, was less than happy with the results here. Still, Black Angel benefits from some interesting diversions from noir canon, and it has some especially effective work from Dan Duryea.

Black Angel Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Black Angel is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Academy with an AVC encoded 1080 transfer in (the somewhat unusual aspect ratio of) 1.28:1*. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the restoration:

Black Angel has been exclusively restored by Arrow Films and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1 [sic] with mono audio.

An original nitrate combined 35mm fine grain positive and dupe negative were scanned in 2K resolution on a Arriscan at NBC Universal.

The film was graded and restored using a combination of these two scanned film elements at Pinewood Studios, London. Picture grading was completed on a DaVinci Resolve and restoration was completed using PFClean software.

The audio was remastered from the restored combined mono track by NBC Universal.

All materials for this restoration were made available by NBC Universal.

With an understanding that the somewhat heterogeneous on display here is probably unavoidable due to the two source elements listed above, this presentation offers some very appealing levels of fine detail in things like some of the close cropped checks in suit jackets some of the guys wear, or the almost tufted look of some of the fabrics worn by the women. There are rather noticeable variances in both brightness and grittiness of the grain field, both of which I'm attributing to the two source elements. On the whole, though, contrast is generally pleasing and gray scale well modulated. There are a few minor signs of age related wear and tear which have made it through the restoration gauntlet.

*Some may feel this does look slightly anamorphically squeezed (see screenshot 5 for an example), but it didn't really strike me as odd looking in motion.

Black Angel Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Black Angel features a nice sounding LPCM Mono track. The film has an above average amount of music courtesy of the subplot involving Martin's playing and composing (and Mavis', and later Catherine's, singing), and the musical elements sound decently full bodied, within the context of what a mid-forties soundtrack typically sounds like. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout and there are no major signs of age related wear and tear.

Black Angel Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Alan K. Rode is conversational but informative, though Mr. Rode falters and calls Constance by her sister Doris' name early on.


• A Fitting End (1080p; 20:53) is an engaging appreciation of the film and Neill by Neil Sinyard.


• Original Trailer (1080p; 1:32)


• Image Gallery

  Production Stills (1080p; 15:40)

  
  

  Posters and Lobby Cards (1080p; 2:40)

Additionally, Arrow has provided their typically nicely appointed insert booklet, with an essay by Philip Kemp, a couple of original reviews released at the time of the film's initial theatrical exhibition, and information on the transfer.

Black Angel Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As some of the supplements on this release get into, Black Angel will probably never be thought of as being in the same league as the most iconic of film noir entries, but it still has its own really distinctive flavor, and it's notable how it manages to skew several even by then well worn noir tropes to its own ends. Duryea is quite good in a kind of difficult role, and the story has a couple of fun twists to keep armchair detective guessing. Video is a bit variant looking, but audio is fine and the supplements very enjoyable. Recommended.