Douglas Sirk | Riding the High Country

Where possible, I like opening a post with a quote that either sums up the sentiments of a movie or at least captures something of its mood. There was a comment by Douglas Sirk on his own work that I felt would be apposite here yet, for the life of me, I can’t locate it just now. As such, I’ll have to settle for the gist of it: it ran along the lines that he liked to make movies about characters who were forever in pursuit not of some dream of the future but instead of their own past selves, straining to reconnect with or recapture something of their youth, something precious lost in the midst of the messy business of living. That notion is steeped in the kind of melancholic reverie that is very appealing. It encapsulates enough unattainability to lend an air of tragedy to any drama and at the same time there is too the promise that maybe some flavor of a spirit since departed can be held onto, some faltering beacon to serve as an anchor. The Tarnished Angels (1957) has a lot of that spirit coursing through it, describing a cyclical, circular path of beginnings and endings, and still offering a shot at renewal and rediscovery as it draws to a close.

The entire concept of the barnstorming pilots traversing the country every season and spending much of their time racing around the massive pylons that mark the course of their near suicidal races is in itself circular. Round and round they all go, chasing the prize money and the fleeting adulation of a crowd of vicarious thrill seekers who will forget the broken daredevils before the ambulance or hearse hauls away whatever remains of them when the shrieks and cheers have faded away. Yes, round they go with all the futility of dogs chasing their own tails, tarnished by their own cut price way of life and with no realistic chance of ever touching the person they once were. Yet, no matter what might pick away at one in the darker moments of life, human nature is sustained not by defeatism but by hope – it is one of the key or defining elements of the human condition after all. So it is with Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), his wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), son Jack (Chris Olsen) and their mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson). These four live a nomadic, gypsy existence, knowing no home beyond their own dreams. Roger Shumann is a figure carved from classical tragedy, a hero in the eyes of others who is terrified by his own limitations. He is one of those post-war lost souls, a man cast adrift in a world that celebrated the feats of courage he once displayed and now bewildered by the artificiality of trying to recreate that daring. And there’s guilt too, that illogical but unshakeable questioning of many who lived through conflict of why one has survived while others paid the ultimate price. It’s a blind too for his own insecurities as he substitutes recklessness in the air for paucity of courage in his personal life. Of course, the route Shumann takes towards redemption in this respect forms one of the major pillars of the story – the brooding intensity of the man is well realized by Stack as he shies away from true affection and then plumbs the absolute depths of moral dissoluteness. His request that LaVerne should quite literally prostitute herself to secure the use of a plane is a shocking moment, the decay of a soul laid bare. From this nadir though he rises again, finally, to first acknowledge his love and then take to the skies to make a last attempt at touching what he once was, and earning for himself something of value through an act of unplanned heroism.

The setting fits in with the cyclical theme too, taking place over the course of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, that carnival celebration that peaks and fades every year and marks the end of indulgence and the last chance to feast and cut loose before the penance and deprivation of Lent begins. It signals the end of Roger Schumann’s time; he has been afforded a taste of his days as a better man and it also represents the opportunity for his wife and child to start afresh. Dorothy Malone did the best work of her career for Sirk – she had won an Oscar for Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels was a chance to work again with the same core team of Sirk, producer Albert Zugsmith, writer George Zuckerman, Stack and Rock Hudson. Her performance here is every bit as good and perhaps better than that award winning role, LaVerne Shumann being a marvelously true creation and wholly credible in her disappointment and disillusionment yet never lacking that spiritual vitality that sustains life. Sirk’s camera lingers with care and tenderness on her features time and again, as she reads My Antonia, sips her drink, smokes her cigarette, or just surrenders to lonely wordless reflection.

She is at her best in her interaction with Hudson’s alcoholic Burke Devlin, the journalist who ended up a hack reporter but who sees the Shumanns as his way back into the world. He starts out with his mind set on exploiting a bit of cheap sensationalism before coming to the realization that the story he thought he was covering is only a cloak for a more timeless tale, something that is worth telling in its own right and which may represent his salvation too. Hudson gets to deliver a superb monologue right at the climax, one that is in turns heavy with reprobation and hope. However, some of the finest moments are those quiet ones in his run down apartment with Malone where all the bumps and hollows of life are navigated in the half light.

Tragedy pays a visit to all those characters, but it doesn’t loiter around them. It wipes the slate in a sense before passing on and leaving the door at least ajar for something more positive to slip in. Jack Carson’s Jiggs is maybe the exception, his destination left undefined at the end. Carson was a great character actor, bulkily comedic in many a picture though generally with a strong sense of pathos about him. Jiggs is a loyal figure, but there is a strong suggestion that the loyalty is largely as a result of his unfulfilled love for LaVerne. He has a couple of standout moments in the movie; his appalled outrage at Shumann’s insensitivity first when he displays jaw-dropping cheapness in drawing spots on a pair of sugar cubes to simulate dice and then proceeds to use them to shoot for the responsibility for bringing up Laverne’s child, and then his reaction to Roger’s shameless exploitation of his wife. Finally, there is that moment at the end of Roger’s wake when everyone drifts away and the lights are slowly doused, when he stands alone in the shadows abandoned and bereft. The other supporting roles are filled with accomplishment, but less shading overall by Robert Middleton and the perpetually sneering Robert J Wilke. A quick word too for Chris Olsen. The child actor only had a brief screen career but a glance at some of his credits – The Tall T, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Bigger Than Life – reveals a lineup to be proud of.

I think The Tarnished Angels is Douglas Sirk’s best film, though I suppose some others might opt for one of his other melodramas. William Faulkner certainly seems to have considered the movie the best adaptation of his writing, something I wouldn’t want to argue with. I’ve seen the film many times over the years and it affects me strongly on each viewing, generally revealing some new insight or idea as all the great pictures do. Sit back and watch it if you haven’t done so, or just watch it again if you have.

There are a couple of options open should you come across anyone who tries to sell you the idea that the impact movies have on culture is negligible. You could think to yourself that this person is mistaken or misguided, and leave it at that. Alternatively, you can attempt to set them straight. Now language and culture are inseparable, their relationship being essentially symbiotic. So, when the movies give us words that become part of everyday language, that ought to bolster the idea of cinema’s cultural significance. Every classic movie fan, and film noir aficionados in particular, will be aware of Gaslight. The story, derived originally from a play, was filmed twice and the concept underpinning it has become a staple of countless psychological thrillers. In a broader cultural sense, the term gaslighting has entered the language and refers to manipulating others to the point where they start to question to their own judgement, perception and ultimately their sanity. All of which brings me to Sleep, My Love (1948), an undeniably stylish entry in this sub-genre.

Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) is a wealthy woman from an elegant, patrician background. She’s not the type of person one would normally think of as likely to awaken in the dead of night aboard a train speeding towards an unknown destination. Nevertheless, that’s the first view we get of her, panicked, frantic and screaming blue murder in confusion. Her husband (Don Ameche), concerned to find her missing and nursing an apparent gunshot wound to his arm, has called in the police. It seems that this isn’t the first time the lady in question has disappeared but no harm has been done and she’s soon on a flight back home to New York. On the way she makes the acquaintance of another well-to-do type, Bruce Elcott (Robert Cummings) who is just home from China. I don’t believe I’m revealing too much here if I get right to the point and say that Alison is being maneuvered into an increasingly vulnerable position by her smooth but calculating husband. This becomes clear quite early on, and I feel it constitutes maybe the biggest weakness of the picture. To my mind, the writing gives away too much too soon. It’s not merely a question of the viewer being deprived of surprises, but rather the fact that this “lay it all before you” approach robs the movie of much of its suspense and accompanying tension. While these are not the only elements in movies of this type, they are important and effectively negating them at an early stage means that viewers are left with little more than a sense of curiosity over how the hero will eventually triumph.

That’s not to say there is no tension or suspense in the movie; individual sequences such as the drug-induced suicide attempt are very well executed. This is where the skill of the director comes into play. Douglas Sirk, along with cinematographer Joseph Valentine, draws full value from the interior of the Courtland home, the staircase featuring prominently. As seen above, it’s essentially pinning Claudette Colbert in place with the shadows cast by the balustrade creating bars to imprison her in her own home, the weight of her own noble heritage bearing down on her and precluding, as though it were an affront to good taste, any consideration that her husband might be plotting against her. This noir imagery is sprinkled throughout the movie, Venetian blinds often replacing the vertical lines with horizontal ones but the impression of individuals trapped by circumstance remains.

The visuals, as one might expect, are among the greatest strengths of the picture. Sirk’s films are always good to look at, and of course mise en scene is a term often used whenever his name comes up; he goes in for a lot of sharply tilted angles here, from those vulnerable shots from below to the more remote ones gazing down with a cynical detachment. These altered perspectives are very much to the fore in the studio of Vernay (George Coulouris). Overlooking the sidewalk and street, here the crooked photographer makes his plans for his partnership with Courtland and his model Daphne (Hazel Brooks) perches higher still on her pedestal and mulls an entirely different partnership. This is all nicely set up to highlight her disdainful superiority, and she quite literally spends the whole movie looking down on everyone.

Claudette Colbert got top billing and she was still a major star at the time. It’s her show really, and she is fine as the increasingly rattled woman who can’t seem to convince anyone she’s not hallucinating. There’s a little sequence around the halfway point where she attends a wedding of a Chinese couple in the company of Cummings and she comes across well here – unaffected and openly appreciative of the opportunity to mingle among a different crowd to her usual acquaintances. It’s beautifully played as she rambles on about how different we all are and her simple take on what makes some people happy and others unhappy, a common feature of Sirk’s films. She gets across the sweetness of her character naturally and even her slight tipsiness by the end of the evening is quite credible – I’ve lost count of the number of actors who overcook it when asked to portray drunkenness on screen.

Robert Cummings is an actor who divides opinion and I’ve heard more than a few people say they find him a poor lead in general. However, I’ve never had any issues with him – I liked him in his movies for Hitchcock (Saboteur & Dial M for Murder) and I think Anthony Mann coaxed a solid performance from him in The Black Book. Frankly, I think his charm is a neat contrast to the polished insincerity and moral weakness of Ameche. Hazel Brooks is a striking presence – physically stunning, sexy and insolent, she is visibly contemptuous or everybody and everything around her. Yet her performance has an odd feel to it, her delivery of her lines sounding stiff and forced to me. Coulouris is an engaging villain, a strange combination of suave and clumsy, menacing and simultaneously the butt of Brooks’ barbs. In minor roles Keye Luke is entertaining as Cummings’ pal and Raymond Burr is welcome but underused as a skeptical detective.

Olive Films in the US released a very attractive edition of Sleep, My Love some years ago on both Blu-ray and DVD. The movie looks clean and sharp and Sirk’s visual style is highlighted most effectively. The script, on the other hand, is just OK. The gaslighting theme will be a familiar one to many viewers and I would have preferred it if a little more ambiguity had been injected, or at least a little more information had been held back, in order to build some added suspense. As it stands, the audience is forever a step or two ahead of the characters, which I’m not convinced is the best approach to take. On the whole, however, I have a positive feeling about the movie. It’s not perhaps full-on Sirk but there is plenty of greed and thwarted desire, with characters living out lives that barely hint at the reality simmering below the surface. This alongside the visuals and a handful of attractive performances are enough to overcome other deficiencies in the script for this viewer.