Product Details

• Actors: Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, Jack Carson, Robert Middleton
• Directors: Douglas Sirk
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Universal Studios
• VHS Release Date: May 14, 1996
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304021690
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11,206 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Rock Hudson has never been better than as the hard-headed newsman with a romantic soft spot for a team of gypsy fliers--especially the sexy parachute-jumping Dorothy Malone--in Douglas Sirk's adaptation of William Faulkner's Pylon. It's the Depression, and the volatile little family--disillusioned World War I ace Robert Stack; his doting wife Malone; his sad, lovesick mechanic Jack Carson; and Stack's hero-worshipping son--has landed in New Orleans for a Mardi Gras air show. Stack's mania for flying ("I need to fly, just like an alcoholic needs his drink!") keeps him at arm's length from his loving family, and he even sacrifices his wife's virtue for a shot at piloting his archrival's spare plane, but his brittle emotional armor cracks in a stunning moment of redemption. Douglas Sirk trades his vivid Technicolor palette for shadowy black-and-white CinemaScope (the gorgeous widescreen compositions are tragically lost on pan-and-scan video) to create a dark, desperate vision of the Depression, where deadened souls wait for the next spectacular crash as fliers recklessly race around pylons. Sirk heightens the alienation with the most stylized shooting of his career: cameras peer through transom windows, shadows slash through scenes, and grotesque Mardi Gras costumes wander through almost every scene. This production is considered by many, including Faulkner himself, to be the best adaptation of the author's work, and it remains Sirk's most bleakly beautiful film. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unexpected greatness, July 26, 2005

By	Alejandra Vernon "artist & illustrator" (Long Beach, California) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

"Tarnished Angels" must have been a huge surprise to its 1957 audience, who were used to Douglas Sirk's lavish melodramas in brilliant Technicolor, especially since it followed the '56 "Written on the Wind" with the same three stars. Based on Faulkner's "Pylon", it is the desperate story of a WWI ace pilot, now barnstorming across the country, trying to scratch out a living for himself and his wife and young son, and the journalist who wants to write a story about them. It has a Depression Era feeling throughout, and also goes back to Sirk's European roots, and has much more in common with Fellini's "La Strada" than with Sirk's better known Hollywood work, and some believe "Tarnished Angels" to be one of his finest films.

Rock Hudson as Burke, the journalist who is looking for a story and falls for the pilot's wife, gives his best dramatic performance, in what would be his last of many films for Sirk (Hudson was Sirk's favorite star). Robert Stack is superb as Roger, the tormented pilot, whose only true love is his airplane, and Dorothy Malone is fabulous as LaVerne, Roger's devoted wife. She has a sensuality that makes the story line of having numerous men in lust or love with her understandable, and among these men is Jiggs, the mechanical whiz who works on Roger's airplanes, and is well played by Jack Carson.

Others in the cast include Christopher Olsen, effective as young Jack, Robert Middleton as the unsavory Matt Ord, William Schallert as Ted, and briefly in some early scenes as a pilot, one can see Troy Donahue, who was to become a bobbysoxer heartthrob a year later with "A Summer Place". The b&w cinematography by Irving Glassberg is excellent, and the Frank Skinner score adds to the atmosphere. This is an unusual '50s film, and a must for Hudson fans. Total running time is 91 minutes.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great performances; grim story: a Faulkner favorite, April 29, 2003

By	Richard E. "Nick" Noble (Southborough, MA USA) - See all my reviews

It is said that William Faulkner liked this film the best of all the cinematic adaptations of his work. It is also said that its star, Rock Hudson, disliked this picture. I do not know if either is true. All I know that it is a grim story, perfectly directed by Douglas Sirk, and that it contains one of Rock Hudson's finest acting performances.

I realize that "Rock Hudson" and "fine actor" are not often used in the same breath, but he was better than many would care to acknowledge, and in this film he shines. By itself, his impassioned, inebriated soliloquy near the movie's end is worth the price of admission. In fact, it was written for the film as a substitute for a literary device used by Faulkner in PYLON that would have translated awkwardly to the screen.

The rest of the cast is also impressive: Sirk has reunited Hudson with Dorothy Malone and Robert Stack, fresh from their Oscar caliber (award and nomination respectively) turns in WRITTEN ON THE WIND. While the lush soap opera of the earlier film has received more critical kudos for its shameless style, THE TARNISHED ANGELS tells a similar story in an altogether different way.

The film is not always appealing, but there is a compulsive magnetism to its pessimistic outlook that holds the viewer.

Perhaps THE TARNISHED ANGELS is simply a dramatic curiosity or an interesting period piece (parts of it can certainly seem dated), but it features some of Hudson's best work (despite what he might have felt about it) and it is far more personal and provocative than some of Sirk's other efforts.

Check it out!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Forgotten Sirk Film...Still Watchable for His Familiar Touch, October 14, 2006

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is the forgotten Douglas Sirk film from his golden period in the 1950's when he made such classic Baroque-style women's pictures as "Magnificent Obsession", "All That Heaven Allows", "Written on the Wind" and "Imitation of Life". The black-and-white 1958 film doesn't have the saturated color palette of Sirk's frequent cinematographer, Russell Metty (who did lens those other films), nor does the story, based on William Faulkner's novel "Pylon", have as strong an orientation toward a female protagonist as the others. Yet, the film has many of the filmmaker's trademark melodramatic flourishes and some superb shot compositions, this time photographed by Irving Glassberg. The result is quite worthwhile and sadly not available yet on DVD.

Set in 1932 New Orleans (though you can hardly tell from the anachronistic 1950's-era wardrobe and sets), the plot focuses on Roger Shumann, a former WWI flying ace who has been relegated to racing around pylons in air shows for prize money. He's married to LaVerne, so in love with Roger that she became a parachute jumper to please him, while raising their son Jack, who worships the ground on which Roger walks. Speaking of hero worship, there is also the dim-witted Jiggs, Roger's loyal mechanic, who holds a torch for LaVerne. Into this dysfunctional band comes local newspaperman Burke Devlin, who smells a good story in reporting on this transient family living hand to mouth to fulfill Roger's intractable need to fly. A lot of emotional gut-punches are thrown among these characters, especially between Roger and LaVerne, until a late moment of clarity seems to arrive too late. The last fifteen minutes contain come far-fetched plot convolutions, but they are in the spirit of the piece.

Sirk reunited three of his stars from 1956's "Written on the Wind" - Rock Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone - to play the three principals, so they know how to maintain conviction with more than a touch of Sirk's often maddening soap opera excess. Hudson, in particular, really shines in this sort of material as Devlin, even in a hilariously conceived drunken speech at the end. Stack is his typical jaw-clenching self though with a morbid sense of self-loathing only Sirk could serve up, and Malone is surprisingly sensual as LaVerne, whether fighting off her impulses about Devlin or hanging on to a trapeze bar as she floats off her parachute with her skirt billowing up (a classic shot). Jack Carson plays Jiggs as the pathetically smitten man he is, while Christopher Olsen has a heartbreaking scene where he is stuck on an amusement park ride watching fate deal its hand (trivia - Olsen is Cindy Brady's real-life brother). This isn't an out-and-out great film but still a very watchable entry in the Sirk canon.