The Tarnished Angels

Based on “Pylon,” a largely forgotten 1935 novel by William Faulkner, and shot in black-and-white CinemaScope, The Tarnished Angels is among Sirk’s most self-conscious and artistically ambitious creations, a relentlessly bleak and disturbing work about the erotic attraction of death. Hudson, so self-effacing that he seems to be fading from the screen, is a reporter in 1932 New Orleans who finds himself morbidly and irresistibly drawn to LaVerne (Ms. Malone), a professional parachute jumper who herself is obsessively involved with her husband (Stack), a barnstorming pilot with a pronounced death wish. – Dave Kehr