Dark Angel, The (1935) - full review!
Produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by Sidney Franklin, with a screenplay by Lillian Hellman and Mordaunt Shairp that was based on the play by Guy Bolton (continuity by Claudine West), this slightly above average romantic drama features Merle Oberon's only Academy Award nominated performance (for Best Actress). Richard Day won his first Oscar (on his fourth nomination) for Art Direction; Thomas Moulton’s Sound Recording was also nominated. Merle plays Kitty Vane, a woman who loves two men, Alan Trent played by Fredric March and Gerald Shannon played by Herbert Marshall, with whom she's grown up. World War I plays havoc with her relationships with each man, who are best friends. Janet Beecher plays Gerald's mother; Henrietta Crosman plays Kitty's Granny and Claud Allister her cousin Lawrence Bidley; John Halliday plays Sir George Barton, who helps Alan after the war as does Frieda Inescort as Miss West. The film is a remake of an earlier, 1925 Goldwyn production starring Vilma Bánky, Ronald Colman, and Wyndham Standing, respectively.
Kitty favors Alan and, unable to get a marriage license in time to elope before he and Gerald must leave to fight World War I, she and he have an affair, unknown to everyone else, as they pretend to be an "old" married couple (with four kids, no less!) the night before he must leave. Unfortunately, Kitty's cousin Lawrence misinterprets the situation and gives spurned Gerald the impression that Alan's been unfaithful to his fiancée. As Alan's superior officer, Gerald denies his friend leave just before a fateful mission during which Alan is thought killed. After two months in rehabilitation for his own injuries incurred, a wounded leg (actor Marshall, who really did lose a leg during WW I, excelled at these roles), Gerald returns to a heartbroken Kitty who, in time (after some separation, 3 years later), becomes Gerald's fiancée. Once Kitty had learned the truth of the denied leave, she'd proclaimed "we both killed him"; they both suffered guilt, hence the time it took them to get back together.
Meanwhile, Alan was not really killed, but he was blinded and refused to give his real name during his recovery, opting for Roger Crane instead, in the clinic run by Sir George. Eventually Alan's convinced to return to Camden Junction but hesitates, once he's there, after imagining what a burden he'd be to Kitty as a blind man. After contemplating suicide, Alan is "saved" and inspired by some innocent young kids, who likely remind him of his youth with Kitty and Gerald, to begin writing children's books as Roger Crane. Miss West, to whom he dictates his text, also assists him with his blindness at his home. Sir George pays Roger a visit and makes the connection between a picture he'd seen of Kitty with Alan and Gerald and one in the local paper announcing the upcoming nuptials between Kitty and Gerald. Happenstance leads a fox-hunt involving these betrothed right past Roger and the aforementioned children (who were on a picnic of sorts) and, even though the three are not reunited, Sir George witnesses Alan's pained expression and desire to move away from the area to prevent a similar, future accident. So, he decides to intervene and telephone Gerald. By Sir George's description of the picture and Roger, Gerald knows that Alan is alive. Gerald decides that he can't help but tell Kitty of this fact, and the two head to the author's house.
When Sir George tells Roger that his friends are coming over, he has Miss West help him to arrange the room and remove all his braille books so that he can fool them about his disability. Alan is uncharacteristically short and cold with Kitty and Gerald, but he nearly gets away with his plan anyway. While saying goodbye to Kitty, Gerald notices that Alan doesn't shake her hand not because of rudeness, but because of his blindness. Self sacrificing again, Gerald returns Kitty to the room where the unseeing Alan mistakes her for Miss West. She speaks, revealing who she is while rushing to embrace him whereupon she convinces him that their love is eternal, whether he likes it or not. Of course, he gladly accepts her this time.
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