The Southern Tragedy of The Tarnished Angels (1957)
- nmojtahed
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Douglas Sirk became fascinated with William Faulkner’s Pylon soon after its publication in 1934. In interviews, he repeatedly expressed his preoccupation with the theme of defeat. In fact, he preferred the French word échec to “failure,” because it carries the implication of a dead end, an overtone the English word lacks. In Faulkner’s novel, Sirk found three central characters, each embodying a different manifestation of this recurring theme.
The ace pilot Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), once famous for his achievements during World War I, has been reduced to performing stunts to survive, endlessly attempting to recapture the glory of his wartime past. LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), a Midwestern girl fascinated by Roger’s heroic image, has followed him without demanding commitment. When they arrive in New Orleans for an air show, they are joined by Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson), an alcoholic journalist who becomes a witness and participant in their unraveling.
The film’s only flashback reveals the first triangle between Roger, LaVerne, and Jiggs (Jack Carson), Roger’s mechanic (later in the movie, Rock Hudson replaces Jiggs).
The subordinate position of women within the masculine world of the Great Depression.
More importantly, it elaborates one of the film’s central themes: the subordinate position of women within the masculine world of the Great Depression. Pregnant and seeking legitimacy, LaVerne asks Roger to marry her. The self-absorbed pilot, still consumed by the heroic persona of his past, cruelly allows a pair of improvised dice made from sugar cubes to decide her fate. While Faulkner leaves Jack’s (her son) paternity unresolved, Sirk subtly suggests that Jiggs is the father (the Administration Code compelled Sirk to be discreet). Significantly, it is Roger’s poster—the circulating image of the war hero—that first captivates her. Sirk uses mirrors for different reasons; one is to flatten a character in the narrative; here, the poster becomes a variation of that same motif, reducing Roger to an image rather than a man.
LaVerne refuses to interpret Roger’s emotional coldness as a lack of love. Instead, she believes he is searching for something lost in him, and she hopes helping him recover it will restore his self-respect. Yet when Roger asks her to offer herself to Matt Ord (Robert Middleton) in order to secure a place in the next day’s race, she realizes he remains imprisoned by the myth of his wartime glory. Flight is not simply his profession; it is the only realm in which he at one time felt pride.
When Roger asks her to offer herself to Matt Ord in order to secure a place in the next day’s race, she realizes he remains imprisoned by the myth of his wartime glory.
Devlin returns to his apartment with the classic iconography of Sirk: we look at him through dark glass, behind a staircase with broken balustrades, he is trapped by the doorframe, and positioned behind the chandelier.
During his first night at Devlin’s place, Roger is awakened by a nightmare in which the German ace pilot sends him plunging downward to his death—a bleak premonition of his own fate. Yet Sirk brings an irony in Roger’s final decision to abandon the racing. As he kisses LaVerne on the wing of the plane—a space between the cockpit, his true domain, and the outside world—he seems to recognize, however briefly, his obligations to his family. This moment also clarifies his final act: rather than landing on the sand runway crowded by the audience and risking the lives of spectators, including his son Jack, trapped on the out-of-control carnival plane, Roger guides the crashing aircraft into the lagoon. It is his one final gesture of responsibility.
The self-absorbed pilot, still consumed by the heroic persona of his past, cruelly allows a pair of improvised dice to decide her fate.
Sirk returns to the theme of desire for death in the movie. The backdrop of Mardi Gras heightens the sense of life's proximity to death. Roger begins to experience his longing for death during the war; the feeling was so stimulating, he became addicted to it: my need to fly is like that of an alcoholic for alcohol. Sirk uses Devlin’s profession as a journalist to position him as an observer, a man recording the collapse of others while remaining unable to alter it. The circular route between the two pylons—the designated space for the “air gypsies”—becomes a boundary inaccessible to others. Not even Devlin’s excessive drinking grants him admission.
In the final cross-cutting between Roger’s fatal crash and Jack’s carnival ride, Sirk juxtaposes spectacle and catastrophe, showing that for the air gypsies, Mardi Gras is not simply an allegory for their lives—it is their reality.
Through the stoic Roger, Sirk gradually draws Devlin closer to LaVerne, the film’s true tarnished angel. At Devlin’s home, she picks up My Ántonia, a novel she indicates she abandoned in order to follow Roger into his glamorous world. In the final scene, Devlin returns the book to her, hoping for a personal return; however, given the film’s bleak emotional setting, a personal return is improbable; it is more likely that she will complete what she had begun before her life was interrupted by the unanticipated arrival of someone from the past. In one of Sirk’s fine touches, Devlin sends LaVerne back to Iowa in a real plane, not a toy plane boys play with to feel like grown-ups.
Devlin sends LaVerne back to Iowa in a real plane, not a toy plane boys play with to feel like grown-ups.
The Mardi Gras setting serves as a tragic counterpoint. Sirk uses the artificiality of the celebration to construct the equally artificial world of the “air gypsies.” Masks and costumes emphasize the emotional and social separation between the characters. Unlike Written on the Wind, where Sirk relied on exaggerated colors and back projection to create heightened artifice, here Mardi Gras provides that visual excess. In the final cross-cutting between Roger’s fatal crash and Jack’s carnival ride, Sirk juxtaposes spectacle and catastrophe, showing that for the air gypsies, Mardi Gras is not simply an allegory for their lives—it is their reality.
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