I have a bad memory and often can't remember the plot details of movies I've seen. Sometimes I don't even remember that I saw the movie at all. Such was the case with Roy William Neill's Black Angel. I sat down to watch the movie, certain that I'd never seen it before. But, not five minutes in, I realized I actually had seen it. Such are the mysterious workings of my memory that all of the major story elements suddenly came flooding back. But that was okay. I didn't mind watching it again.
Dan Duryea has the lead role in the movie, and he usually plays some kind of crook or creep or both. That's somewhat true in this movie, but not completely true. I'll get to that.
Duryea is Marty Blair, a pianist and song writer who has been jilted by his wife, singer Mavis Marlowe, played by Constance Dowling. Marty is still in love with Mavis but Mavis doesn't have any love for him. In fact, she's told the doorman to never let him in the apartment building. The lovelorn Marty makes an attempt to hop in the elevator, but the doorman throws him out. As he's mooning about outside, Marty sees nightclub owner Marko (Peter Lorre) go inside and head up to see Mavis, though Marty has no idea who Marko is. Angry and depressed, Marty goes to a bar where he plays the piano and drinks and drinks and drinks.
Mavis has yet another visitor later that evening -- a sap named Kirk Bennet who has come to beg Mavis to stop blackmailing him. It seems that Mavis, who we already suspected was no good, has a side hustle of getting men into compromising situations and then threatening to tell their wives if they don't pay up. Kirk had a fling with Mavis, and now she's putting the squeeze on him.
As it turns out, though, when Kirk gets to the apartment he finds Constance dead -- strangled with her own scarf. Apparently Kirk never watches cop shows because there's a gun on the bed and he immediately picks it up. He then kneels down to examine the body and notices that she's wearing a big read heart-shaped brooch. Kirk starts to call the police, but then he hears a sound that draws him into the next room, where he finds nothing. He hears another sound and notices the front door swinging shut. Returning to the body, he realizes the brooch is gone.
At this point, Kirk decides to get the hell out of there. But just as he's leaving, he sees Mavis' housekeeper returning and decides to high-tail it down the stairs. Unfortunately, for Kirk, the housekeeper sees and recognizes him.
Kirk's wife Catherine (June Vincent) gets a visit from the police that evening. Captain Flood (Broderick Crawford) fills her in on the fact that her husband is wanted for murder. Kirk arrives home and admits that he had an affair with Mavis, that he went to see her but he didn't kill her, and he can explain everything, really he can. Flood tells him he can explain it down at the station house.
Catherine remains completely loyal to Kirk even though he cheated on her and is the prime suspect for Mavis' murder. She sets out to prove his innocence, a quest that eventually leads her to Mavis' ex-husband, Marty. Marty is still sleeping off his drunken binge when she arrives. The building custodian, played by Hobart Cavanaugh (a weasel character whose duplicity will play an important role in the film's denouement) lets Catherine into Marty's room, which is latched from the outside.
Once awakened, Marty reacts angrily to Catherine's questioning as she clearly suspects he may have murdered Mavis. But Marty's friend Joe (Wallace Ford) shows up and explains that he brought the drunken Marty home and locked him in his room (see, the latch is on the outside). Therefore, Marty could not possibly have murdered Mavis at the time she was killed. Catherine feels so sheepish that she leaves some money under the door on her way out to apologize.
Marty later shows up at Catherine's door and hands the bill back, explaining that, despite appearances, he doesn't need it. His songs still sell. Marty is clearly attracted to Catherine, and at this point they team up to try to prove Kirk's innocence -- though Marty is more interested in hanging around Catherine than he is in clearing her cheating husband.
As the two amateur sleuths pursue their investigation, they visit the nightclub where Mavis used to sing. Marty sees the nightclub's owner Marko and realizes it's the guy he saw going into Mavis' apartment after he was kicked out. Catherine and Marty become convinced that Marko must be the murderer, which leads to long, involved machinations in which Marty and Catherine (who, by happy coincidence, is also a singer) team up and get a job working for Marko under assumed names. Eventually they learn that busy little Mavis also had a blackmail scheme going against Marko and, in what looks like a final showdown, they force Marko in the presence of Captain Flood to open the box he has hidden in his safe, which they are certain contains the heart-shaped brooch, which will prove his guilt. Alas, it isn't so. Marko had nothing to do with the murder. Marty and Catherine's nightclub act and the sneaking around in Marko's office turned out to be a waste of time.
Marty tells Catherine that they might as well face it, her husband killed Mavis and, besides, he cheated on her, so maybe they should get together. Catherine is having none of that. So Marty goes on another drunken binge, as he is wont to do. During the binge, he runs into a woman he knows who is wearing the heart-shaped brooch. Asking her where she got it, she explains he gave it to her. He grabs the brooch and causes a big fight. Later, as he's lying in a stupor, he begins to remember what happened the night of the murder. His friend Joe brought him home and locked him in when he was falling-down drunk. But later that night, the duplicitous custodian let him out. Marty then managed to sneak past the doorman and up the Mavis's apartment. They argued and he eventually strangled her with her scarf. He hid himself when Kirk came in, then stole the brooch and ran. This was, of course, logistically implausible, but that sort of thing is a Woolrich trademark.
I won't flog a dead horse by going into the final complicating details, but, of course, Marty confesses just in time to save Kirk from going to the gas chamber. And so, Dan Duryea, who usually plays a complete heel, manages to redeem himself this time.
Was it worth watching (twice)? I'd say so. I've never read a Cornell Woolrich story or seen a movie based on one of his stories that didn't feature unlikely twists and absurd coincidences, not to mention blackouts and amnesia. But that's part of the charm; his characters exist in an almost dreamlike world that is inexorably drawing them down into darkness. Duryea is great in this movie, and the rest of the cast is almost too good for the story. Peter Lorre as Marko is alternately smarmy, menacing, sad, and inscrutable, as only Peter Lorre can be. The story may not be especially strong, but the actors are fun to watch.
