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Angels Over Broadway

19 Oct

Angels Over Broadway –– directed by Ben Hect and Lee Garmes –– noir about Broadway hustlers in the 40s. 80 minutes, black and white, 1940.

* * * *

Douglas Fairbanks Junior is first class and well worth watching as the tough-talking hardboiled grifter of this Ben Hecht (His Gal Friday) written and directed film noir. D.F. Jr never takes the gum out of his mouth, and it works. Mealy-mouthed John Qualen is fine as the focal figure, which he also was in His Gal Friday. Thomas Mitchell, in full Irish drunk mode once again, plays the surrogate Hecht character and gives vent to the screenwriter’s most self-indulgent utterances. It is endearing to hear the yearning idealism of an earlier era, and in this era it was put in the form of a certain overblown futile self-pity, which you find in many of its writers, Saroyan, Steinbeck, Maxwell Anderson, Odets. Lovely Rita Hayworth plays an aspiring nightclub chorine, uncertain of herself yet loyal. She’s young and touching. She plays the movie’s moral center, and Hayworth as a picture’s moral or immoral center is always well cast. The supporting cast are excellent. The movie is a piece of chewing gum, something to do until something tastier comes along, but that’s all right. Like chewing gum it’s not supposed to stick with you. The flavor doesn’t last, but it has a tang while it lasts.

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