BLACK ANGEL (1946)

We open at night with a nice zoom shot through the window of a skyscraper apartment belonging to Mavis Marlowe. Her estranged husband, Martin Blair (Dan Duryea, at right), wants to see her to give her the gift of a ruby brooch, perhaps in an attempt to patch things up, but the doorman has instructions not to let him up. As Marty leaves, he sees someone who looks a lot like Peter Lorre ushered up to Mavis' place. Marty goes to a bar to drown his sorrows, drunkenly playing piano, and eventually his buddy Joe (Wallace Ford) takes him to his apartment to sleep it off. Later in the night, her current love Kirk Bennett visits Mavis. He finds her door unlocked, a record (written by Marty) playing on repeat, and her dead body on the floor, the ruby brooch next to her. The next morning, the brooch is missing and when the cops find out that Mavis had been blackmailing the married Bennett over their affair, they arrest him for murder. When he is found guilty and sentenced to death, his desperate wife Catherine (June Vincent) winds up asking Marty for help in clearing her husband. Clues lead them to a club owner named Marko (hey, it's Peter Lorre!). Recognizing Marko as possibly the last man to see Mavis alive, Marty and Catherine go undercover and auditions as a singer/pianist team, getting a job at Marko's place. Catherine cozies up to Marko and discovers that he, too, was being blackmailed by Mavis. Does he also have the missing brooch, which might peg him as the killer? Will the burgeoning romantic feelings between Marty and Catherine affect their search? 

This nifty noir takes a couple of left turns at this point that I can't reveal, but they lead to a true film noir climax. Dan Duryea is probably best remembered for his bad guy roles (The Little Foxes, Scarlet Street) and it's nice to see him playing a fairly sympathetic part here. He has good chemistry with June Vincent in what might be her best movie role, though she went on to a long career in TV character parts. Lorre underplays his part to good effect. John Phillips has the thankless role of Kirk Bennett, Broderick Crawford is the cop who arrests Bennett, and Wallace Ford has little to do as Marty's buddy. Some reviewers aren't sure that this is really noir, but in my eyes, it ends up being practically a textbook version of a film noir, though it may not come clear until near the end. Roy William Neill, director of most of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes movies, does some nice stylistic things here and there, including an interesting flashback sequence near the end. Recommended. [TCM]