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52 DGA QUARTERLY PHOTOS: PHOTOFEST; (OPPOSITE) EVERETT ERROL MORRIS on the MAGNIFICENCE of DOUGLAS SIRK'S OBSESSION H E T A R N I S H E D A N G E L S is one of the greatest movies ever made," contends Errol Morris as he draws the shades and settles into a much-used couch in his Vermont vaca- tion home. He is escaping for a few days after finishing the mix on his new se- ries, Wormwood, and takes itemized issue with the 1958 New York Times review that trashed Sirk's adaptation of William Faulkner's novel Pylon, about air-circus fliers. "If you wanted to make a movie about love and death, I don't think you could come close to this movie; just the amount of story material and vi- sual material it contains," he says. "Sirk created some of the most despairing films ever and, since I am a connoisseur of despair, I find them totally irresistible." Morris first encountered The Tarnished An- gels around 1973 while programming a Douglas Sirk series at the Pacific Film Archive at Berke- ley. The film tells the Great Depression-era, Mar- di Gras-set story of New Orleans reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson), who entangles himself with a team of visiting airshow fliers: World War I flying ace poster boy Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), his parachutist wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), their worshipful son Jack (Chris Olsen) and Roger's mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson). LaVerne is a bombshell whom Roger treats callously, and rumors circulate around Jack's true paternity, with Jiggs as the assumed second. Burke smells the great American human inter- est story when he meets Roger, the famous flier, and invites the cash-strapped band to stay in his apartment. He quickly falls for LaVerne and in- tervenes when Roger sends her as an offering to wealthy flying team sponsor Matt Ord (Robert Middleton) in exchange for a hastily repaired plane to race. Inevitable tragedy transpires after Roger realizes his familial negligence and vows a fresh start once this race is completed, but the plane fails and Roger crashes in the water as he selflessly avoids the crowds on the runway. "Sirk created his own brand of tragedy—the un- happy happy ending," says Morris, "and Tarnished Angels is the bleakest of them all. It's that line from Caddyshack, 'You'll get nothing and like it.'" The film opens with a black-and-white Cin- emaScope panorama of the New Orleans airfield before cutting to the adjoining fairground and whirling carnival rides, with Burke meandering his way to camera. "As a person who loves wide angles, this has some of the most impressive ones, one after an- other. You feel this world of aviation," says Mor- ris. Soon, though, a third of the Scope frame is obscured by the verticals of a corrugated hangar door, as Jiggs steps in front of it to look out. "Sirk loved to put his characters in front of barriers that obscured part of the frame," Mor- ris says. "In this film, he often uses objects that cast vertical or horizontal shadows on the char- acters. It's reminiscent of the checkered racing flag or pylon, but also suggests imprisonment [ S C R E E N I N G R O O M ] T BY R O B F E L D