| | 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 More...
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