Merle Oberon was one of the stars honored in Summer Under the Stars last year, which gave me the chance to DVR a movie I hadn't blogged about before, The Dark Angel. I probably should have watched it in March since it was shown again for 31 Days of Oscar thanks in part to Oberon's nomination, but I only got to it recently.
Oberon plays Kitty Vane, who lives in one of those English manor houses in the early part of the 20th century. She's got two best friends who have all known each other since childhood, Alan Trent (Fredric March) and Gerald Shannon (Herbert Marshall). With these three knowing each other more or less all their lives, it's unsurprising that they would wind up having romantic feelings for one another, or at least heterosexual romantic feelings, since there's no way they could have depicted Alan and Gerald being in love with each other. But while both guys like Kitty, Kitty loves Alan and only considers Gerald a close platonic friend.
And then the Great War comes, sending both of the guys off to fight. Both of them get leave at the same time, and when they get home, Alan decides he's going to propose to Kitty. Gerald accepts this, and Alan and Kitty think about having the marriage be as soon as possible. This would be doable with the ten days' leave he and Gerald have. But unfortunately, all leave gets cancelled just as Alan is going to get the marriage license. No vicar is going to be able to perform the ceremony before Alan has to go back to the front.
So at the other end of the railway line where the soldiers are going to depart for France, Alan and Kitty decide that they're going to spend the night together anyway, despite not being married. Lawrence, another soldier who knows Alan, Kitty, and Gerald, happens to see Alan in a compromising situation, and is a bit of a dick to Alan about it. You'd think Alan could just tell Lawrence that he's having dinner with Kitty, but the idea of an unmarried couple sharing a hotel room together is something their class of society would consider scandalous back in those days (see the later Merle Oberon movie The Divorce of Lady X).
Lawrence is enough of a dick that he lets Gerald in on the fact that Alan had somebody in his room with him, which leads to problems out on the front. Alan tries to put in for leave, but Gerald won't approve it because he thinks Alan has been dishonorable to Kitty. Instead, Alan winds up on one of those dangerous missions that could lead to his death, one that he in fact doesn't return from.
Gerald eventually returns to England and Kitty feeling responsible for Alan's death, more so when Kitty reveals it was she who was in the hotel with Alan that night. Worse, it turns out that Alan didn't die at all. He was only blinded by an explosion in the field and taken to a German hospital under a different name. After some time and with the war over, Alan is as well as he's ever going to be but still blind, and free to go back to England.
He takes the train to Kitty's home town, but decides not to get off because he doesn't want to be a burden. Instead, he goes to another town where he stays at an inn where the kids have never seen a blind person before. Alan treats the kids to some children's stories, which get written down and published under that different name. But you just know that eventually Alan's path is going to cross with the path that Gerald and Kitty are on. They've decided to marry, since Gerald always loved Kitty and they just know that Alan is dead.
If you like sappy 1930s melodramas, you're going to love The Dark Angel. It's well acted and the story certainly pours on the melodrama. If melodramas aren't your thing, then you probably won't care so much for it, since the characters make some pretty dumb (and dated) choices in their lives. Indeed, I don't think The Dark Angel is the sort of movie I'd pick if I were trying to get people not so interested in old movies into 1930s films. Better to pick a comedy or a drama with more of a payoff at the end like San Francisco with its depiction of the earthquake. But it's easy to see why audiences of the day would have flocked to The Dark Angel.
No comments:
Post a Comment