Synopsis
The Tarnished Angels (1957) is a black-and-white Douglas Sirk drama you can watch online on iFILM. The setting is Depression-era America. Roger Shumann, a celebrated World War I flying ace, now scrapes by as a daredevil stunt pilot at air shows while his wife LaVerne parachutes for the crowds below.
Reporter Burke Devlin shows up to write a piece on this drifting family and falls hard for the beautiful, neglected LaVerne. Roger cares only for engines and altitude and barely notices his wife, and Devlin gets pulled into a marriage already coming apart. Robert Stack plays the pilot as a man hollowed out by war, Dorothy Malone is his wife, and Rock Hudson is the reporter. Sirk shot it in wide CinemaScope.
The screenplay comes from William Faulkner's novel Pylon, long thought impossible to film. The poster boasted as much. Sirk, usually the king of glossy melodrama, made his driest, most bitter picture here — no shine, just people with nowhere to land. One for lovers of classic Hollywood and serious literary source material. Stream The Tarnished Angels (1957) online on iFILM.
Starring
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