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"We'll celebrate." "Celebrate what?" "I don't know. Love, life, art, music... America." Hearing Carnegie Hall strains, the dilapidated pianist (Hugo Haas) takes a reflexive bow and embarks on a melancholy reminiscence. An Old World talent brought over by a smitten widow (Mona Barrie), the new continent has him at once elated and lost, "a displaced person" is the feared condition. His stumbling at a hotel bar before a concert disrupts the routine of the hard-boiled dancer (Cleo Moore), she attends his performance planning to return the favor and instead surrenders to Chopin. "My first autograph in America," the bond grows into marriage, curdles into ruination. "A curse, a heavy veil," the titular preoccupation, passion by any other name, Haas and Moore examine it modestly and humanely in a Blue Angel of their own. The musician is wry behind a ponderous exterior, aware of his age yet delighted that he can stir a young blonde. The gal is no vamp despite sprawling on a couch with a bitten apple, "a woman with natural instincts," equally pained by the collapse of their relationship. Flooded terrain is seen from the train carrying the hopeful couple, "maybe it's the end of the tour." The wife models negligees against the wishes of the increasingly obsessive husband, whose gigs fall from concert halls to "mixed programs" to boogie-woogie dives. Incisive compositions in seedy trappings, the expressive hand fed to a machine for desperate money, the unmistakable personal thrust that jolts a thrifty production. Sullivan's Travels for the coda, "why doncha play something gay, ya bum?" Scorsese avouches an influence on "Life Lessons" (New York Stories). With Rick Vallin, Karen Sharpe, Marc Krah, and Genevieve Aumont. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |