The Tarnished Angels (1957 Douglas Sirk)

There's always more going on with Sirk than appears at face value. Here you start to wonder why he chooses shots of giant Mardi Gras puppets and masked faces - the moment where Hudson and Malone's kiss is interrupted by a partygoer masked as death is one of Sirk's most startling images and is there for a reason. Similarly the shot of the planes through the fairground flyers is similarly giving us a forward message. He was a clever guy.

Story of Depression-era troupe of flying gypsies 'from another world' - a moody Robert Stack (was he ever anything else?), wife Dorothy Malone, son Christopher Olsen and loyal mechanic Jack Carson - and their decisive encounter with sensitive newspaperman Rock Hudson. Based on the William Faulkner story Pylons (which Howard Hawks inspired him to write!*), around which the flyers race in scary flying sequences that probably now wouldn't be allowed.

Music by Frank Skinner. Metty is off filming in colour somewhere else and we are left in the reliable hands of lrving Glassberg, who shoots in black and white and CinemaScope.

* Source 'Who the Devil Made It?'