Band of Angels (DVD)

Product Description

Band of Angels (DVD)

Academy Award winners Clark Gable and Sidney Poitier star with Yvonne DeCarlo in this story of an aristocratic young woman who falls from theheights of Southern society to the absolute bottom--and of the forbiddenlove that redeems her in A Band of Angels.New Orleans, 1860s. Southern Belle Amantha Starr is away atan exclusive girls' school when her father dies unexpectedly. She learnsshe is now penniless: Her father had lost everything--their money, theirplantation and their slaves. Worse, the truth comes out that her motherwas part African American--and under the law of Louisiana, Amantha mustbe sold into slavery. She is purchased by plantation owner Hamish Bond, who soon falls in love with his beautiful new slave--earningAmantha the resentment of overseer Rau Ru . When the UnitedStates' Civil War breaks out, Bond loses his plantation and reveals tothe newly freed Amantha that he yearned his fortune as a slave trader.

Amazon.com

Sidney Poitier, in the beginning of his career, fires up the screen in the Civil-War-era bodice-ripper Band of Angels. The movie follows Amantha Starr (Yvonne De Carlo, later on The Munsters), a Southern belle whose fortunes fall when her father dies and family secrets come to light. She ends up under the protection of Hamish Bond (Clark Gable, close to the end of his long, remarkable career and still radiating an easy, charismatic masculinity), a plantation owner with secrets of his own. For much of the movie, slavery and the Civil War are just a colorful backdrop for a turgid romance--but just when you're ready to write the movie off, a scene unexpectedly digs into something more emotionally and politically complex. Poitier plays Bond's plantation foreman; every time he appears, Band of Angels turns into something fierce and promising. That promise never fully takes hold--Clark Gable is the movie's hero, not Poitier--but those crackling scenes (combined with a surprisingly sexual frankness in a 1957 feature) make Band of Angels more than just an embarrassing collection of manly swaggers, flashing eyes, and lugubrious spirituals. --Bret Fetzer