Review of Band of Angels

I saw Band of angels at the Cinemathèque in Paris about thirty years ago, and yet i have not forget the film. What a splendid melodrama, a melodrama like Emilio Fernandez "el indio" could do in Mexico, or the great Philipino author of "Insiang". A melodrama with political flavor. Of course we are in the United States in the Fifties, and we know Yvonne DE Carlo will not leave at the end with Sydney Poitier! But the idea -which is totally possible- of a person with black blood, appearing totally white, and even ignoring her family links was a good way to help a white audience realise the cruelty and the insanity of racism (didn't Upton Sinclair wrote a novell on this theme?). The scene in the boat where the slave merchant tries to rape Yvonne, and she commits suicide, films frankly a theme that was not common on an Hollywood film, the institutionalised rape of afro-American women by whites. In the same time the scene where she is sold in auction, (and bought up by Clarck Gable, one the most wanted man of the time), bring another strange dimension, the s&m one: its no longer filmed realistically, but like a nightmare or a dream, or a erotic fantasy. We are no longer in Gone with the wind but in Histoire d'O.

Of course, politically, for today standards, it is quite poor, and Sydney Poitier fight for his share with gusto in a film unable to make anything else than a stereotype. It seems the script didn't knew really what to do for him.

The black Mistress of Gable is better treated by the script: her role is to be remembered. She plays it with great sharpness. Was she a theater actress?

And the style of Hawks, those slow movements of camera, those colors...

You have to put back the film in the context...Its a courageous film. Its a clever film. It a very beautiful film.