Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Overrated and overhyped

It is a performances centric movie

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Band of Angels (1957)A lot of people saw this as Clark Gable playing up the "Gone With the Wind" angle, but it's really a story about slavery and race in America. It's not a classic like GWTW, but it should stand on it's own merits. Sure, it's a bit watered down for the late 50s sensibilities, and yes, it's pretty melodramatic stuff, but it's not a bad movie and well worth a look.A young, beautiful Yvonne De Carlo plays Amantha Starr, the daughter of a plantation owner. She's away at college when she is asked to come home. Her father has taken ill and by the time she arrives, he has already passed away. Then comes the realization that Amantha is really half black, and instead of the daughter of a plantation owner, she will now be sold along with all of the other property to pay off back taxes. Hamish Bond (Clark Gable) buys her, but sets her up like a lady.A 30 year old Sidney Poitier plays Rau-Ru, a freed slave and raised as Hamish's son. Rau- Ru was educated, so he is all too aware of the atrocities that are performed on black people by people like Hamish, himself, so there's a love/hate relationship going on there.This DVD was released a little before Yvonne De Carlo death, and it's good that we get a chance to see her before she became well-known as Lilly Munster.

This film is called " Band of Angels " and with such a title and with Clark Gable as the star, one would expect it to be a motion picture about flying. Instead it's a great surprise to see it is set during the Civil War. Based on the novel by Robert Warren, it tells the story of Amantha Starr (Yvonne De Carlo) an attractive young white girl raised on a southern plantation in a well-to-do fashion. When her father dies, she discovers her wealthy father was in terrible debt and she is sold into slavery, and it is further discovered she is actually the daughter of a female Negro. Fearing the worse, she attempts suicide when she realizes she will be put up for sale at auction. Purchased by Hamish Bond (Clark Gable) a wealthy southern gentleman, introduces her to a fine house and unusual servants. Sidney Poitier is in great form as one sees the early caliber of his acting. Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Rex Reason and Torin Thatcher, make fine additions to this surprisingly good film. Recommended to any who seeks a good movie. ****

Well, we have quite a range of reactions to this film from the greatest film ever to the worst film ever seen. I prefer it to the more polished "Gone with the Wind". I believe it was one of Gable's most significant roles after 1939, along with "The Tall Men". Yes, Clark Gable was no longer the swaggering rogue, man of action and lady killer of the '30s. Here, we have a more mature weathered-looking Gable, who has settled down to the genteel life of a southern plantation owner, after a financially successful life as a rough and tumble Yankee slave trader. Yet, he is still something of a rebel. He has a guilty conscience about his former life as a ruthless slave trader and wants to make partial amends by treating his large group of slaves decently. In fact, he plans to leave his estate to one of them. He tends to see the born southern aristocracy as largely decadently effete, as exemplified by a neighbor who takes a liking to his recent light-skinned mulatto acquisition((Yvonne De Carlo, as Amantha). Clearly, Gable, as Hamish Bond, has no interest in supporting the recent unsettling changes in the political scene and the impending Civil War. He recognizes that these events will probably shatter his idyllic life and that the lives of many of his slaves will likely be changed for the worse if they are liberated by the Yankee troops. Perhaps, he recognized that secession failed to solve the looming problem of a lack of new territories for the expansion of plantation slavery, thus depressing the monetary value of young surplus slaves. Perhaps, he also recognized that a separate South impeded the legal demands slave owners could make in recapturing escaped slaves who made it out of the Confederacy. On the other hand, Hamish refuses to support the cause of the Yankee troops who want to sell his soon-to-be harvested cotton. He risks execution in burning his cotton crop and most of his equipment.Hamish rescues, in dramatic fashion, a beautiful cultivated mulatto(Yvonne De Carlo, as Amantha) from a fate she could not bear, although she initially shows little gratitude. He does not require that she become his mistress and in fact gives her a chance to escape his world, but she has a last minute change of heart and decides to remain with him. Amantha has experienced two benevolent slave owners: her father and Hamish. This is in marked contrast to her treatment as a slave on the auction block. The dialog makes it clear that her father and Hamish are rather exceptional in this regard. Thus, I don't buy the criticism that this film provides an unrealistically rosy picture of the typical lives of slaves. The film makes the viewer feel deeply the horror of a sudden change in status from a southern belle to a life-long slave. If you want a much more extreme example, read the book "Skeletons in the Zahara", in which shipwrecked Yankee sailors are transformed into barely living slaves of fearsome tribes or Arabs near the coast of northwest Africa.The relationship between Hamish and his slave and appointed successor Rau-Ru(Sidney Poitier)is another key element of this story. Rau-Ru hates the institution of slavery and hates Hamish even more for his rather successful attempt to make slavery agreeable to his slaves. The fact that he is the heir apparent for this plantation does nor change his attitude. The last portion of the film deals mainly with the critical relationships between Hamish and Rau-Ru, now a Union soldier, and between Hamish, Amantha and a certain Union Caucasian soldier, against a background of Union troops overrunning Hamish's plantation. See the film to find out how this cliffhanger complex of relationships turns out.

The world was full of all colors during the time leading up to the Civil War in the South…The cry for freedom was in the air like a rising wind… Slaves have already gone wild on many plantations but not yet on Pointe du Loup, Louisiana, where it was still serene…Hamish Bond maintains a plantation outside New Orleans… At the slave mart he buys a beautiful girl for $5,000… She is the daughter of a supposedly wealthy Kentucky planter… After her father's death she discovered he has left her nothing but debts… She also discovered her mother was a black slave and that, according to the custom of the time, she is classified of Negro blood and literally sold down the river to discharge her father's debts…Amantha Starr is horrified and degraded at the treatment she—a well-bred white girl—receives when she becomes classified as a woman of mixed race… Hamish doesn't relegate the proud dark-haired woman to slave quarters but treats her as a lady in his household, where romance develops… Clark Gable plays the New Orleans wealthy gentleman who got a past he'd like to forget… He knows better than most men that money is no cure-all… He used to think it was… He used to think it would open the door to friendship and other essentials more important than power… He used to believe it was everything: a drug for loneliness, a painkiller for certain memories, the whole apothecary shop for every problem of life… He bought the attractive Amantha because she was on the slave block… Somebody else was bound to bid her on… That fellow with laced cuffs putting his hands on her and he hates lace cuffs…Yvonne de Carlo plays Amantha, the lady of quality with Negro heritage… She didn't go on her way north, nor she jumped the boat at Pointe du Loup… She has suffered, and she always will, with Hamish or without him… There always will be the fires, the memories because she loves him, and because he's the only man she ever loved, or ever will…The young Sidney Poitier plays the rebellious ambitious chief slave Rau-Ru who gets off the sidewalk for nobody… No constable or paddy roll ever stopped him…No steamboat captain ever asked to see his pass… Will he feels lucky enough to deliver his boss to the hangman one day?