76
Metascore
12 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- The best-ever adaptation of a Faulkner novel for the screen, directed with passion and perception by Sirk.
- 100San Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoSan Francisco ChronicleWalter AddiegoIt's a bleak, fatalistic tale about rootlessness and the changing moral order in the machine age, but the wondrous details of the film trump any grand thematic concerns.
- 80Chicago ReaderDave KehrChicago ReaderDave KehrBased on a minor novel by William Faulkner (Pylon), the film betters the book in every way, from the quality of characterization to the development of the dark, searing imagery. Made in black-and-white CinemaScope, the film doesn’t survive on television; it should be seen in a theater or not at all.
- 80The New YorkerRichard BrodyThe New YorkerRichard BrodyWith its tangled shadows, fun-house mirrors, wrenching angles, and glaring lights, the wide-screen black-and-white photography evokes the psychological distortions of reckless and rootless outsiders, the disproportion of their seedy circumstances to their doomed heroism.
- 80Time OutGeoff AndrewTime OutGeoff AndrewArguably Sirk's bleakest film - perhaps because it was shot in greyish monochrome rather than luridly stylised colour - and one of his finest, this adaptation of Faulkner's Pylon reassembles the three principles from Written on the Wind for a probing but sympathetic study in failure and despair.
- 75Slant MagazineClayton DillardSlant MagazineClayton DillardLike Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole, which creates a damning critique of media circuses that would allow a man to die if it means increasing readership, The Tarnished Angels understands the innate human desire to look at beauty or terror as the potentially catastrophic fuel of public interest.
- The Tarnished Angels is a polished psychological melodrama, meticulous in its subtle observation, but only the planes involved in the dangerous flying scenes are strictly of the 1930s.
- 30The New York TimesBosley CrowtherThe New York TimesBosley CrowtherMr. Faulkner's faded story does have some flavor of the old barnstorming tours of the early air-circus fliers, but there is precious little of it in this film, which was badly, cheaply written by George Zuckerman and is abominably played by a hand-picked cast.