Review of The Tarnished Angels

Though exchanging his usual glossy urban surroundings for a rough open-air environment – dealing as it does with vagrant members of an air show/race (which is perhaps why it was shot in black-and-white) – this typical Sirk effort is particularly redolent of his Teutonic background: powerful (indeed often histrionic), moodily-lit and with performances to match (allowing Rock Hudson one of his finest dramatic showcases, most effective towards the end when he gives his newspaper editor boss a piece of his mind). Incidentally, its three stars – Hudson, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone – had just come off the same director's WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956); Malone is the woman admired by virtually the entire male cast including her egocentric spouse (ace flyer Stack), his long-suffering mechanic (Jack Carson), hated entrepreneur (Robert Middleton) and, the latest recruit, honest (read alcoholic) reporter Hudson. Also on hand is a young boy, picked on over his doubtful parentage, whom Hudson befriends and offers hospitality to his whole family (eventually tagging along himself after being fired from his job). Malone opens her heart to him one night and he decides to help when Stack has no qualms about his wife ingratiating herself with Middleton for his sake over the acquisition of a new plane (Stack's original vehicle had been destroyed in a crash which also killed Middleton's protégé, Troy Donahue!). After Stack himself perishes in another race and a gloomy luncheon is thrown in his honor, Hudson arranges for Malone and her son to start a new life elsewhere.