![]() (Unfortunately, one of his last, "Marines, Let's Go," is one of the greatest wastes of celluloid in the history of the industry, but doesn't obviate the quality and significance of most of his work.) Since this is a Civil War-era film, but made before the defining, sweeping civil rights occurrences, turmoil, and advancements generated by the 1960's - it provides an excellent presentation of the previous approach to this subject. First, it is a later film directed by Walsh, who made and average of over 2-1/2 movies per year from 1912 to the early 1960's. This is a better film than history has accorded it, and presents even more reasons to view it today than in times nearer to its production neatly 50 years ago. The film has an excellent music score by Max Steiner, great technicolor lensing by Lucien Ballard and a solid supporting cast. The film's title refers to a newly-formed Union regiment of black soldiers in the waning days of the Confederacy. Gable later is a fugitive from Union justice for burning crops and stores, thereby risking the hangman's noose. Gable has a dark secret about his past that he'd like to forget and De Carlo struggles to accept the truth about her racial origins. Gable and De Carlo make an appealing pair in the film but they spend a great deal of time quarreling with each other. Yvonne De Carlo is the mulatto who becomes Gable's mistress and Sidney Poitier as a proud man who was raised as Bond's son. Clark Gable dominates the film as an ex-slave trader and plantation owner in the antebellum South. Warner Brothers spared no expense in this lavish film production of a young woman of mixed parentage who falls in love with the man who buys her at an auction but denies her racial heritage. I think it was ahead of its time and can be better appreciated by audiences today. Band of Angels did not get the best of reviews at the time it came out. Though Knowles is reputed to be a dead shot as a duelist, Gable faces him down and makes him turn tail in my favorite scene in the film. He's originally from New England and doesn't like southern aristocrats as a group. Actually Patric Knowles has another important scene with Gable after Poitier assaults Knowles and escapes. Knowles makes a big mistake in assuming Poitier thinks that way. His confrontation with another plantation owner, Patric Knowles, when he tries to force himself on DeCarlo is not something one with the slave mentality would do. He's educated enough to see exactly the institution of slavery for the dehumanizing force that it is. What Gable thought of as an act of kindness, is not perceived by Poitier as that. His Ra-Ru is filled with fire and passion. Actually it's Poitier who walks off with the acting honors here. Though DeCarlo is fine, Ava would have made the part a classic. ![]() Had Gable done this film at his former studio MGM, I'm sure Ava Gardner would have been cast opposite him. Very much in keeping with that flawed classic. Catch the scenes at his plantation on the delta when his slaves greet him and DeCarlo coming off the riverboat. But it also borrows from Birth of a Nation. The film does borrow liberally from Gone With the Wind in terms of Gable's character. Gable's description of life in the slave trade when he levels with Yvonne DeCarlo is a high point of the film as is his description of the rescue of an African baby who grew up to be Sidney Poitier. ![]() It's as if the owners of the Amistad grew a conscience. Today's audience which has seen Steven Spielberg's great true film Amistad about the illegal African slave trade, can appreciate far better Gable's dilemma. He's got a great hate for his benefactor who he really sees as no different than other, crueler slave holders. ![]() And he's acquired enough education to appreciate the situation he's in. Poitier, in violation of the laws of the time, has been educated. Also in that house is a young black man named Ra-Ru played by Sidney Poitier. Gable buys her and sets her up in his New Orleans home. She's not the mistress of her father's plantation, she along with the rest of the property, real and human, is to be sold for back taxes. Her mom was black, one of the plantation slaves and she is technically one also. One of his new charities is Yvonne DeCarlo who received one rude shock when her father died. A man deeply concerned about the sins he committed in this life as a slave trader, living it down as best he can. As Hamish Bond, former slave trader, and now plantation owner in the Louisiana delta country, Gable is an older and more worldly wise Rhett Butler. It's obvious that Warner Brothers decided to duplicate the success of Gone With the Wind when they hired Clark Gable for the lead role in Band of Angels. ![]()
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