Weint um die Verdammten

I've often felt that a movie--even a bad one--can be enjoyed on many different levels--for example, the acting alone, the script, the direction, photography, atmospheric effects, etc. It's hard to find anything to say about BAND OF ANGELS except that it was photographed in excellent technicolor and Max Steiner actually manages to create an interesting score--though definitely not one of his best.

Indeed, no one is at their best in this film--not Clark Gable, as an older and tired looking version of Rhett Butler, nor beautiful Yvonne de Carlo--each given some of the worst dialogue any actors have ever been saddled with. It's a murky tale of a plantation owner in love with a woman of mixed ancestry. Patric Knowles and Sidney Poitier try to bring some semblance of dignity to the acting but there's simply too much tripe to allow anyone to look good. And by the way, it's not based on a Frank Yerby novel, as someone has said previously. It's based on a novel by Robert Penn Warren which I hope was better than the movie. Had to be.

Only the Steiner score provides a point of interest. Certainly nowhere near the level of that other Civil War epic starring Gable. No way!

This film is a typical pre-Sixties look at the Civil War. They are very progressive for the time, having one black actor in a major role and several in bit parts, but even still the film is startlingly unwitty. It would be great to study the politics behind this film. It follows the early Hollywood mode of having white actors play black roles, and I would not hesitate from assuming that they had Evon De Carlo to play the role because of the taboo of a black person kissing a white person on the screen. Sidney Potier delivers a fairly decent performance, while Evon De Carlo and Clark Gable could not get out of the Rhett Butler/Scarlett O'Hara mold. The film has some fairly good scenes, but overall it is just barely watchable.

A nice attempt at costume drama with intense moments , plot twists and some weak incidents . Set in the Southern states at the time of the American Civil War concerning Amantha Starr : Yvonne De Carlo grows-up as a privileged Southern heir . But later on , Amantha learns has African-American blood and since it's the pre-Civil War era she promptly suffers from a distressed fate . Become an orphanaged woman and winds up on the auction block . Starr becomes both the property and the mistress of mysterious New Orleans landowner Hamish Bond : Clark Gable.

This epic movie is set in early American Civil War bringing mayhem, revelations and threats. A good film though tended to acquire the reputation of a poor man's "Gone With the Wind" and again Clak Gable as its top-drawer star . Overall, though , it is a big budgeted picture with impressive battles , expensive action , sparkles enough and enjoyable scenes especially on the pursuit set pieces through swamplands. Based on the best-seller book by Robert Penn Warren with interesting and moving script by John Twist and Ivan Goff . Clark Gable is pretty good , playing in his ordinary style . Yvonne De Carlo looks properly surly in this really luxury drama . Performance honours, however, are stolen by a young Sidney Poitier in his starts , as he clearly robbing the show as a rebellious African-American overseer . Very good support cast with plenty of notorious secondaries, such as : Efrem Zimbalist Jr. , Rex Reason, Patrick Knowles , Torin Thatcher , Andrea King , Ray Teal , among others .

It displays a stirring and agreeable musical score by grand maestro Max Steiner . As well as colourful cinematography in Warnercolor by Lucien Ballard that sets off the action in glamorous and haunting fashion . The motion picture was well and professionally directed by Raul Walsh . He was one of the best Hollywood craftsman who made a lot of films in all kinds of genres , such as : "Big Trail" , "Distant Drums", "Along the Great Divide" , "Dark Command" , "Gun Fury" , "Gentleman Jim" , "They Died With their Boots on" , "Tall Men", "The Thief of Bagdag" , "White Heat", "Northern Pursuit" , "Roaring Twenties" , "Blackbeard Pirate" , "They Drive by Night" , "Pursued" , "High Sierra" , "Strawberry Blonde" , "Battle Cry" , "Naked and the Dead" , and several others . Rating : 6.5/10 . Worthwhile watching. The flick will appeal to Clark Gable, Yvonne De Carlo and Sidney Poitier fans .

I have to say this film was much better than the civil war potboiler I was expecting. Yes it definitely has overtones of Gone With the Wind but if you put Clark Gable in a Civil War movie that's what you are going to get. Warners have obviously spared no expense with this one and the money shows on screen. Gable's salary would have been a part of that and frankly he is too old for the role of a slave trader turned plantation owner in the old south but he brings a legacy with him that is there on the screen. His big scene where he comes clean to Yvonne De Carlo about his slave trading past could almost be paraphrased as "Frankly my dear you really shouldn't give a damn" and it's almost as if Gable knows it. De Carlo is also too old for her part by at least 10 years but she does some her best work here. The trouble is that her best work can only be described as competent when the part of Amantha requires more fire than De Carlo can offer. The real acting pleasures here are provided by some of the supporting players. Carolle Drake, in her only screen appearance, gives a cool and knowing performance as Gable's housekeeper and former mistress who still loves him. Likewise Juanita Moore makes something out of the nothing the script gives her in a brief appearance as a maid on a steamboat. Andrea King leaves you wanting more as Miss Idell who seemingly ends up with Amantha's inheritance. King's exit scene (quite early in the piece) as she walks away towards the plantation house with her back to the camera is beautifully shot. Sidney Poitier on the other hand seemed a little self-conscious to me as the educated slave (and by proxy Gable's adopted son figure). Overall this is a film that has improved with age and deserving of a re-evaluation today.

It's with some sense of poignancy that, in the late 1950s, the old guard of Hollywood began to finally fade away. With Band of Angels we have a middle-aged Clark Gable in one of his last ever archetypal he-man roles, Raoul Walsh, one of the few directors left who had been around since the beginning, and John Twist, a writer of adventures and romances who had started back in the silent era. These men were professionals of their day, still able to turn out a good production, and yet it was also clear they were becoming hopelessly out of time.

Band of Angels is one of many pictures from this time to take a stand on racial issues, and yet even by the standards of the time it is a woefully misguided attempt. Rather than using Yvonne De Carlo's situation to demonstrate the horrors of slavery and make the point that a person's colour is skin deep, it seems to present her being branded black as something horrifying in itself. It holds up kindly masters in mitigation of slavery, and even goes so far as to condemn a slave (the Sidney Poitier character) who is ungrateful for this condescending attitude. There's also a full supporting cast of cringeworthy stereotypes – including a "mammy" – and all the drawling and eye-rolling that cinema had mostly put-paid to by this time. The makers of the movie meant well, I'm sure, but it is clearly a case of old Hollywood trying to do The Defiant Ones while still stuck in Gone with the Wind mode.

And yet there is much to be said for old Hollywood. Walsh's dynamic direction brings an iconic look to scenes like Gable and De Carlo's kiss during the storm. He brings real intensity to the duel between Gable and Raymond Bailey, stealthily moving the camera forward as the two men get closer to each other (a trick he first used in his 1915 feature debut, Regeneration). Despite his age Gable is still very much the virile, eye-catching lead man, and this is a decent performance from him – check out the look in his eyes when he slaps his rival at the slave auction. There is also some achingly beautiful cinematography from Lucien Ballard, with some gorgeous Southern scenery and really effective lighting of interiors, achieving a look with candlelight and shadow that was hard to pull off in Technicolor. Band of Angels is, if nothing else, a movie to be enjoyed visually – and in this way more than any other harks back to a bygone age.