The Trouble With Angels

I saw an angel once. It was in the 1970’s- my first summer in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. I consumed several bad clams, got hepatitis and turned the color of a stick of Land O’Lakes butter. One morning, half-crazed with fever, I cracked open my eyes to witness a white-winged creature approximately the size of a silver dollar doing an Irish jig on my knee. This apparition made me more annoyed then awestruck, and I flung an ashtray at it, which only made the damn thing dance faster. Eventually I passed out, and when I awoke, the fever had broken and my tarantella-twirling vision was mercifully gone.

The incident did not change my life in any way. I did not get a rescue cat and name it Gabriel. I did not listen to “Angel of the Morning” over and over. And I didn’t seek out reruns of the TV series Touched By An Angel. I know people have a fundamental need to think that there’s someone watching over them, but in actuality it’s just the IRS. But what aggravates me most is having to sit through movies about celestial critters. At least ghosts move furniture around and scare folks. According to most religions, like Judaism, Christianity and Islam, angels are God’s intermediaries. But in movies, they usually appear to mend marriages and win sporting events.

In The Bishop’s Wife (1947), Cary Grant is uncharacteristically dull as an angel sent to help an Episcopalian bishop and his wife, played by David Niven and Loretta Young. And unless you were forced to watch it on a plane, not many saw The Preacher’s Wife, the excruciating 1996 remake starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston. Even Lucille Ball is charmless in Forever, Darling (1956) as the madcap socialite tormented by a guardian angel (James Mason) only she can see. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) at least shows they make mistakes in heaven, as a boxer (Robert Montgomery) is taken before his time and escorted back to earth by a heavenly messenger (Claude Rains). The remake, Heaven Can Wait (1978) starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, is mildly amusing thanks to Dyan Cannon. But in another awful remake- Down To Earth (2001), a comedian (Chris Rock) is ended before his time and his soul is thrust into the body of a wealthy white dude. More problematic is the Al Jolson Goin’ To Heaven On A Mule number in the movie Wonder Bar (1934), with its cringeworthy vision of black heaven complete with tap-dancing angels, nightclubs and pork chop trees.

Both versions of Angels In The Outfield (1951 and 1994) in which God’s irritating meddlers lead a baseball team to victory are enough to make one embrace atheism. The Angel Levine (1970), The Kid With The Broken Halo (1982), The Heavenly Kid (1985), Heart And Souls (1993) are all movies that would turn the Pope into a Satanist.

Even more hideous is Date With An Angel (1987) in which Michael E. Knight finds a winged blonde bimbo in a swimming pool.

And don’t get me started on the gag-inducing Michael (1996) starring a beer-gutted John Travolta as a molting angel who smells like freshly baked cookies. I wanted to stab someone when I walked out of the theater.

Perhaps the most famous film angel has to be Clarence Odbody (Henry Travers), who appears to George Baily (James Stewart) in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life (1946). But I always loved the scary Bedford Falls the angel shows George. Tawdry, crime-ridden, sleazy- I would have moved there in a minute. Anything would be preferable to a town where everyone sings “Auld Lang Syne” at the drop of a hat. And I always thought that when you heard a bell ring it wasn’t that an “angel had gotten his wings”- it’s that your apartment building was on fire.

One of the rare films that still makes me laugh is The Horn Blows At Midnight (1945), starring Jack Benny as a band member for the Paradise Coffee Radio Hour who falls asleep on the podium and dreams he is an angel in heaven who is given the duty of descending to earth and blowing his trumpet at midnight in order to destroy the planet. Imaginatively directed by Raoul Walsh, with a stellar supporting cast, this unfortunately flopped at the box office when it opened. But it’s just a joy to watch.

City Of Angels (1998) was a loose reworking of Wim Wenders’ Wings Of Desire (1987)- a movie that looked beautiful but I must admit I never warmed up to. Instead of Berlin, angels roam the streets of Los Angeles in the Brad Silberling film. They wear trendy trench coats and sit atop the Hollywood sign, appearing only to the dying or the delusional. They also eavesdrop on people, listening to their thoughts and dreams- which in L.A. must be pretty frightening. Imagine having to overhear thousands of lousy ideas for future film projects. Nicolas Cage plays Seth, a restless angel who, while picking up a dying soul in a hospital, falls in love with the spunky yet stressed-out surgeon (Meg Ryan). Cage is all sorrowful, puppy-dog eyes as he dreams of experiencing mortal feelings like taste, smell, pain and how to tell the difference between Bud Lite and Bud Dry. But is he willing to become mortal for the love of a woman- especially when the woman is the terminally cute Meg Ryan? It’s When Angel Met Sally or Wingless In Seattle.

At least writer-director Kevin Smith tried for something different when he made the wildly uneven Dogma (1999). That stars Linda Fiorentino as a woman who is visited in the night by a flaming, crotchless seraph (Alan Rickman), who informs her that she has been chosen to prevent two serial-killing fallen angels (Ben Affleck & Matt Damon) from re-entering heaven under a loophole in Catholic dogma, which would mean an end to all life. She is joined in battle by two pot-smoking slacker prophets, Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), a 13^th apostle named Rufus (a wonderful Chris Rock) and a dreamy muse stripper (Salma Hayek). As in every Kevin Smith film, all roads lead to New Jersey. His blasphemous fantasia is actually mountains of Catholic doctrine filtered through the eyes of a comic-book geek. It’s a mess, but at least it’s ambitious.

It’s the angel Gabriel that seems to have gotten his own franchise of films.

In the bizarre pre-Code film Gabriel Over The White House (1933), Walter Houston plays a crooked U.S. President who, after a car accident, has his soul overtaken by an angel and transforms suddenly into a man of action who takes over the Government, uses Federal troops to wipe out gangland crime, and in a dictatorial fashion somehow causes world peace.

Constantine (2005) is based on the DC comic Hellblazer.  Keanu Reeves plays the chain-smoking demonslayer- John Constantine, in this loony, sort-of entertaining fantasy/action film. The lovely Rachel Weisz plays a detective suspicious of her twin sister’s suicide who ends up teamed with Constantine in a furious battle against the forces of darkness threatening to break through from the underworld. But it’s worth it just to see the sublime Tilda Swinton as the manishly dressed angel Gabriel, and Peter Stormare as a fey Lucifer wearing white suits left over from the Miami Vice TV series. Keanu Reeves looks way too lean and fit for the lung cancer-suffering exorcist antihero, but anyone searching for stark realism in a movie about warring angels and demons should have their head examined.

In Legion (2010) it’s the Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) who disobeys God’s order to destroy Earth and descends to the planet, cutting off his wings and contacting a pregnant waitress at a desert diner to inform her that her baby will save mankind. The angel Gabriel (Kevin Durand) shows up to derail Michael’s plans. It’s like The Terminator, but without all the fun.

A longstanding war between angels in heaven descends to earth in The Prophecy (1995) an inspired, wonderfully weird film by Gregory Widen. Christopher Walken is wickedly funny as a very vengeful angel Gabriel, wearing slick-backed hair and fond of crouching atop buildings with a demonic smile on his face. He considers humans “talking monkeys” and uses dying souls as his drivers. A young, handsome Elias Koteas plays a cop (who once studied for the Priesthood) who travels to Arizona and finds himself fighting for the soul of a possessed girl alongside a pretty schoolteacher (Virginia Madsen). Near the end of the film Viggo Mortensen shows up as a deliciously malevolent Lucifer in this enjoyable film which spawned 4 sequels that I’ve never had the guts to sit through.

Gabriel (2007) is an ambitious Australian fantasy/action epic about the angel Gabriel (Andy Whitfield), sent to Purgatory to rescue the other fallen angels and bring the light back to the afterlife. Sammael (Dwaine Stevenson, with creepy contact lenses) is the evil entity who has broken the spirits of the other angels, including Amitiel (Samantha Noble), who has lost her wings and been turned into a junkie prostitute named Jude. Director Shane Abbess does a lot on a miniscule budget, even though the movie is overlong and feels groaningly familiar. But the handsome, riveting Andy Whitfield really holds the picture together. This amazing actor played the lead in the first season of Spartacus before he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. He documented his brave struggle fighting the cancer that tragically cut his life so short. This may be the only film about angels that actually stars a truly beautiful soul.

In that spirit, give me John Phillip Law’s gorgeous blind angel Pygar in Barbarella (1968) any day.

There are some other angel-related things I’m not opposed to. I love the movie Angel (1984) (“Honor student by day, Hollywood hooker by night!”) and the fabulous 1969 psychedelic camp classic, Angel, Angel, Down We Go, starring folk singer Holly Near and Jennifer Jones, or practically any movie featuring the Hell’s Angels. I’m quite fond of the song “Johnny Angel,” sung by Shelley Fabares. But most of all, I love angel food cake. Made without egg yolks or butter, these delicate, spongy, cloud-like creations are sheer perfection. So, the next time you consider seeing another stupid movie about angels, opt for a slice of angel food cake instead. It’s like stabbing your fork into a little piece of heaven.