Despite its somewhat forbidding title and the fact that it is sneaking around the bug-houses on double release with a fifth rate war film, I would recommend Angel Baby as a film which, for all its faults, is always engrossing entertainment. Following the path broken by Elmer Gantry, this small budget film has as its background revivalism in backwoods America, but is different from that picture in that it also has faith healing as a prominent ingredient.

I can think of only one other film which seriously investigates this subject, Georges Roquier's Lourdes Et Ses Miracles, and that has never been released commercially, though a sixteen millimetre print is available. Angel Baby does not pretend to be a defence, a support or an expose, instead it uses faith healing as a background to a fairly conventional love story. I am not one of those local critics who believe that a plot summary is the same as a review, but in this case it will make description of the film a lot easier.

A young and obviously sincere evangelist, Paul, is married to Sarah, a much older woman, with whom he travels around the country side preaching. A dumb girl, Jenny, comes to one of his prayer meetings and through him regains her voice; the couple then accept her into their entourage as an assistant. Inevitably, attraction develops between Paul and Jenny, and so she decides to travel off on her own. Paul realises that his wife had married him for his own neurotic needs and so asks her for a divorce.

The Life and Lovers of Mozart

Meanwhile, an unscrupulous manager hoaxes Jenny into believing that she has the gift of healing by the laying on of hands. Disillusionment follows when a vengeful crowd (learning of the deception from Paul's wife, who is present) wrecks one of her meetings; in the confusion, Sarah is killed by a failing beam. Jenny runs away, but is confronted by the mother of a lame child who still insists that she can heal. Jenny prays with the boy and is surprised when he walks a few steps. By this time Paul has tracked her down and, realising he loves her, asks her to return with him.

False Appearances

The immediately obvious flaw in the film is the apparent fact that it begs the question of the nature of faith healing. When the lame child "walks", we don't know if this is a real cure, or just the result of the over-charged emotional, almost hysterical, atmosphere. Similarly, the exact reason for Jenny's inability to talk is glossed over. The question of whether it was hysterical or physical in origin is carefully evaded. In the case of the child, one feels that the next day would bring a return of the affliction.

But I don't know if begging the question is legitimate charge to level at this picture, for it does not claim to be a case study of the psychology of belief. Instead it uses the emotional excesses of evangelism as a back-drop for its love story. From the viewpoint of cinematic technique, there are many satisfying things about It, especially the opening sequences arranged around the titles.

What was mishandled badly later on in The Innocents, here is most effective. With the screen in total blackness, the soundtrack gives us a gradually increasing in volume, amateurishly played version of "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Suddenly, close-ups of ecstatic worshippers and preacher appear on the screen in a long tracking shot. The atmosphere of heat and hysteria is overpoweringly irresistible and the music changes to the handclapping and rhythm that is so close to the roots of jazz. There is a cut suddenly to the closeup of a young man and girl kissing feverishly outside on the grass. This admirably suggests the basis for the exuberance of the worshippers—an abandonment to physical excitement.

Nothing else the director (Paul Wendkos) achieves later in the film quite matches the style of these opening scenes, but he does produce a lot of other deft touches of imagination. For instance, when Paul (George Hamilton) is preaching about Delilah and Jenny (Salome Jens) is evoking her in a tin-pot charade, the whole tatty scene takes on a deeper significance for Paul and his wife.

An Ageing Neurotic

Mercedes McCambridge, an actress not seen much since her brilliant performance in All The King's Men (she did have a bit in Giant), is magnificent as Sarah, the ageing and pitiful wife. The scene where she examines her face, cruelly exposed by bright lights, in a too-revealing mirror, her venomous insults hurled at Jenny during their disastrous final meeting, the neurotic agony she is constantly expressing in Biblical quotations—all are moulded into a convincing picture of a tormented woman attempting to find the wrong kind of Salvation in religion.

As Jenny, Salome Jens, a newcomer to films is likeable and quite adequate. She has an attractive (? Tennessee) accent and is a blonde who is not glamorous but has a glow of character in her almost homely features.

The picture's faults (in the sense of technique, that is, rather than such lapses of plausibility as occur in the story itself, e.g., the convenient death of Paul's wife), are the sometimes slipshod editing and George Hamilton's overdependence on his good looks as a substitute for solid acting ability. But even if it is still obviously a cheap film, within its limitations, it is still a most entertaining one.

Mock Mozart

The projectionist played a record of "The Marriage of Figaro" overture at the wrong speed during interval; an unhappy omen, as it turned out, for the film proper, Mozart, purports to be the story of the last period of the composer's life, during rehearsals for "The Magic Flute" and the composition of the requiem, in 1791.

When his wife goes to the spa at Baden for a few months, he has an affair with the girl singing Pamina in the production of the opera supervised by Schikaneder— or so the film would have us believe. Actually, the whole thing is completely preposterous, reducing its story to a treatment of the show-must-go-on formula.

With Oskar Werner as an effiminate-looklng Wolfgang and, surprisingly enough, Nadja Tiller somewhere in the cast (I still don't know which one she was) and with a Schikaneder who looks as though he were a fugitive from Powell and Pressburger's "Tales of Hoffman" the film doesn't have much chance of even looking convincing. The colour is very murky; all the greens and blues come out as a similar shade of aquamarine and the print has been knocked around quite badly. The Vienna Symphony Orchestra (conducted by Hans Swarovsky) has little opportunity of showing what it can do and it is impossible to tell, within this context, just how well Gottlieb Trick, Anton Dermota, Hilda Gueden and Erich Kunz are singing.

There are a couple of fine images at the end (of Mozart's coffin being taken to a pauper's grave) which show some of the artistic sensibility that has been missing from the preceding mess.