Band of Angels

The plot involves a pre-Civil War Southern belle (whose father has sent her to school in the north which should give you a hint) who returns to Kentucky when her father falls ill. She arrives to see him being buried, and immediately afterwards hears first that her father was bankrupt and all the slaves will be sold and then that she herself is the child of a slave woman and therefore she too will be sold. It seems her father had an affair with a mulatto slave and raised the child as if the mother had been white and married to him. He has (somewhat unbelievably) concealed this from his child, who doesn't understand why her mother is buried outside the family cemetery. Our beautifully-dressed belle ends up being literally sold down the river -- she leaves pleasant Kentucky to be sold on a New Orleans auction block. (The further south you got, the worse conditions were: the other slaves are probably going to end up on a mosquito-infested sugar cane plantation and face a much worse fate than she does, but the movie fails to make this point). It's an eye-opener how particularly shocking the slave auction is when an apparently white woman is being auctioned -- which gives a lot of insight into subliminal racism.

Although a bit dated at parts (the music at the beginning, for example, and the scenes with the slaves singing like a choir), this is a very thought-provoking and yet entertaining movie. I highly recommend it.


A Film Ahead of Its Time   October 6, 2000
Robin Smith (Dayton, OH USA)
45 out of 49 found this review helpful

It would be interesting to know how audiences reacted to this movie when it was first released in 1957. I never knew that African slaves got packed into ships like sardines until I saw the miniseries "Roots," yet in this movie Clark Gable reveals the shameful story of how Africans were captured (sometimes with the help of other Africans) and packed into slave ships, and how cruelly they suffered. It is like seeing the other side of Rhett Butler, a very dark side. I don't consider this movie to be so much a romantic story as it is a story about forgiveness and the hope of a new and better era. I never knew that Sidney Poitier and Clark Gable had been in a film together, and it is a treat to see two such great actors confronting each other. Poitier plays his character superbly--he is rightfully impatient for freedom and justice, yet he knows he has to watch his step or else he will be crushed. "Gone with the Wind" seems very shallow compared to this movie.


Twisted, Grotesque Artifact of White Denial   December 3, 2005
Danusha Goska (Bloomington, IN)
20 out of 70 found this review helpful

"Band of Angels"

1957

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Starring Clark Gable, Yvonne DeCarlo, Sidney Poitier, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Carolle Drake

Warning! This review contains spoilers! The end of the movie will be revealed!

Plot: a light-skinned daughter of a plantation owner and a slave is sold into slavery after living a young life of luxury. A series of men attempt to rape and/or seduce her. Finally, she embarks on her "happily ever after" with a slave trader.

Where to begin. How to summarize everything that is wrong with this ugly little movie.

It must be said that this film has its fans. One can see why.

"Band of Angels" has star power: Gable, who did not age well, is 56 here, and he looks ten years older, but he's still Gable. This is your one chance to see Sidney Poitier and Gable together. Yvonne DeCarlo is a great beauty.

The film has glorious sets of the old South, lovely gowns, and a series of bodice-ripper scenes that some will find arousing.

It has a tried and true bodice-ripper, romance novel plot: a woman falls in love with her rapist, and in this case, her owner: a slave trader who bought her at a slave auction.

Many viewers will find this plot, though, icky, and Gable is too creaky here to ignite the kind of spark he could once ignite that will get us past the ick factor.

The real problem with this movie is this: the movie thinks that it is a groundbreaking, truth-telling, realistic depiction of the horrors of the enslavement of African Americans. It's not, though. Rather, it is a tragic display of white denial.

I know what you're thinking. "This reviewer is politically correct!" The thing is, I'm not politically correct at all. "Gone with the Wind" is one of my favorite movies.

But "Gone with the Wind" has tremendous narrative and archetypal power that transcends its unrealistic portrayal of slavery.

"Band of Angels" has no such power.

Its "realistic" and "truth telling" depiction of slavery includes the following:

In the opening scene, two slaves are shown running away. They, like the other slaves in the movie, are very well dressed. Even GWTW has the decency to show slaves in ragged clothing.

Read descriptions of how real slaves actually dressed. They dressed in rags, or in nothing at all.

The runaways walk tall and quick. Their body movements announce that they consider themselves to be the equal of their captors.

Again, even GWTW depicted the deferential walk and posture that slaves had to adopt. Read Richard Wright. Blacks in the South had to assume a different posture and walk just to survive, right up until the Civil Rights Movement.

The runaway slaves' owner decides to punish them -- by having them pull weeds! Read any honest history of slavery. Runaway slaves were punished with horrible tortures. "Pulling weeds" was not one of them.

There is one bad white Southerner in the movie. Like most of the other men in the movie, he tries to rape Yvonne DeCarlo. She easily rebuffs him. Millions of real slaves were not so lucky.

Most of the white Southerners in the movie are well meaning, and most of the slaves are happy. Carolle Drake, whose dignified performance is the best thing about the movie -- it is a real tragedy that this is the only film she ever made -- plays a slave woman who is in love with her owner. She is light skinned, and is allowed to be dignified. Other, darker slaves are shown as idiotic and animal-like, or as so overjoyed by the presence of their slave owner that they burst into spirituals.

Sidney Poitier plays a slave who has been treated well by his master, Clark Gable.

Poitier repays Gable for this excellent treatment by scheming for Gable's death. It is only when Gable reveals that he is Poitier's father that Poitier realizes his appropriate love for the man who owned him and raped his African mother.

In the film's capstone scene, where Gable talks about the horrors of the slave trade, Gable describes savage Africans as doing most of the dirty work. Gable, poor, innocent white slave trader, physically fights against the Africans who are savaging their own people in order to supply him, Gable, with human cargo.

For any decent person, watching this scene of white denial is gut wrenching.

Finally, Yankees arrive. They are every bit as bad as the Yankees in GWTW. The poor, stupid slaves who welcome their arrival, Gable intones, are not intelligent enough to realize how lucky they had it under their beneficent Southern owners.

Again, if you like seeing beautiful women in pretty costumes, and if you want to see Yvonne de Carlo's bodice ripped -- six or seven -- I lost count -- men in the film attempt to have their way with her -- and if "woman falls in love with rapist" plots are your cup of tea, and if you can ignore the nauseating denial that underlies this exercise, then you may enjoy this movie.

Otherwise, it is more of sociological interest than aesthetic.



the best clark gable movie!   January 11, 2000
master card (Spring Lake, Mi United States)
16 out of 18 found this review helpful

This is Clark Gable's best movie, aside from "Gone With The Wind". Very sharp acting, great script. A must see! You'll love it every time you watch it. This is one great, great movie!


Romance, history, pretty melodrama   July 28, 2006
Margo Carmichael (USA)
16 out of 19 found this review helpful

The positive reviews are right-on, including great Civil War era costumes, and scenery of New Orleans.

The negative reviewer obviously did not see this movie, because:

The Clark Gable character was not a rapist.

On the contrary, if anything, the Sidney Poitier character said Hamish Bond killed with kindness.

The woman house servant had only good things to say about Bond.

Amantha Starr did not fall in love with a rapist.

Hamish Bond's revelations at the end may have been melodramatic, drums beating in the background, but the pathetic truth is, the slave trade had its advocates in both races and both continents.

And life under the Carpetbagger occupation had certain hazards, especially for women.

For an interesting twist on the subject, read _River Rising_ by Athol Dickson, set in Louisiana bayous in 1927.

Also, _A Country Such as This_ the re-released excellent novel and social commentary by James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy.