Black Angel is a good, fast-paced Cornell Woolrich mystery and certainly one of the noiriest of all noirs. It features lots of grimy black-and-white photography of seedy hotels and bars, and a nebbishy weakling who is falsely accused of murder and who is rescued from execution by a last-second phone call to the Governor. It also offers a blackmailing chantoosie and a hogshead of red herrings. The plot turns on an unusual episode of amnesia. Martin Blair, played by Cornellian Dan Duryea, has strangled his cheating ex-wife while in an alcoholic haze but doesn't remember that he did so. He gets himself involved with the attractive wife of a man who has been accused of the murder, abandons alcohol for Coca-Cola and sets out the find the killer. Eventually he falls off the wagon, and in a blackout suddenly "remembers" that he himself is the perpetrator. "It's Korsakoff's syndrome," mumbles an authoritative doctor, trying to add a glimmer of credibility to a doubtful turn of events.
I had never heard of Korsakoff's and I thought it was just mumbo-jumbo, but it turns out there is such a condition: "Korsakoff's syndrome is a chronic memory disorder caused by a severe deficiency of thiamine. It is most commonly caused by alcohol misuse."
But Korsakoff's is not a come-and-go disease; it's a progressive deterioration. Moreover, there's not the vaguest hint in the "literature" to suggest either that a Korsakovian is likely to commit a murder and then forget it or that a second bout of drinking can restore his memory. That sort of stuff is strictly Hollywood
Once again Hollywood amnesia proves to be the most flexible and variable of all diseases.
Black Angel | |
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