There are stretches of 'Black Angel' that make it feel longer than its 80-odd minutes and sometimes the reticence and reserve of June Vincent can leave her character almost a solid wood bench but otherwise this is a deceptive and bleak tale told with touches of film noir visuals with the camera work and scene blocking as well as art nouveau set design and music which add up to make this a sleepy hit.
Dan Duryea has more to do with his character than I expected; Wallace Ford gets a few lines of dialogue, which I think improves any film; Peter Lorre has a few scenes of stealthy slime and Broderick Crawford has fun underplaying a police officer more in the know than he lets on and Constance Dowling gets a lot of bang for her buck from a small but memorably mean role.
Well directed and photographed, albeit I felt that June Vincent needed a little more help interpreting her character in some scenes and some of the musical interludes were overlong and needed tighter control or editing.
It's impossible to say much of the plot beyond a brief premise because it's a simple tale but one easily ruined and it deserves not to be for those watching for the first time.
Suffice to say that the two female characters and the two males in their lives, the wives played by June Vincent and Constance Dowling and their troubled husbands were all interesting parallels of each other: the wives being beautiful singers capable of getting strong emotions from their piano playing husbands and the husband's having plenty of problems each; which allows for a lot of the plot points to develop from their characters.
I rate a good score of 6.5/10 which I've upped to 7/10 on IMDb's star ratings because 'Black Angel' is a film that I want to recommend and it has Wallace Ford waddling with energy so I've happily rounded up.
I recommend if you like mellow noir and films built simply but effectively plus fans of artistic design will be happy.
Dan Duryea has more to do with his character than I expected; Wallace Ford gets a few lines of dialogue, which I think improves any film; Peter Lorre has a few scenes of stealthy slime and Broderick Crawford has fun underplaying a police officer more in the know than he lets on and Constance Dowling gets a lot of bang for her buck from a small but memorably mean role.
Well directed and photographed, albeit I felt that June Vincent needed a little more help interpreting her character in some scenes and some of the musical interludes were overlong and needed tighter control or editing.
It's impossible to say much of the plot beyond a brief premise because it's a simple tale but one easily ruined and it deserves not to be for those watching for the first time.
Suffice to say that the two female characters and the two males in their lives, the wives played by June Vincent and Constance Dowling and their troubled husbands were all interesting parallels of each other: the wives being beautiful singers capable of getting strong emotions from their piano playing husbands and the husband's having plenty of problems each; which allows for a lot of the plot points to develop from their characters.
I rate a good score of 6.5/10 which I've upped to 7/10 on IMDb's star ratings because 'Black Angel' is a film that I want to recommend and it has Wallace Ford waddling with energy so I've happily rounded up.
I recommend if you like mellow noir and films built simply but effectively plus fans of artistic design will be happy.