Boring

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Amantha Starr (Yvonne De Carlo) is the cultured daughter of a Kentucky slave owner. Abolitionist Seth is taken with her. Upon her father's death, she returns home to find Miss Idell had claimed the estate and Amantha was ruled to be born from a slave mother. The blue-eyed white girl is taken by the slave trader to pay off her father's debt. Hamish Bond (Clark Gable) takes pity on her and bids the vast sum of $5k to purchase her. He may be kind to his slaves but he is still a slave owner. Rau-Ru (Sidney Poitier) and Michele are two of his slaves. The Civil War begins.It's an odd concept to put a white woman into slavery of the old South. Based on a novel by Robert Penn Warren, maybe there is good intention in the material but it does not execute well. Hamish tries to be heroic but I can't accept it. At least, Beauty and the Beast has the Beast grow into loving Beauty. Clark Gable is playing Clark Gable. Hamish isn't the character who grows but it's up to Amantha to grow from her freed high-class privilege to submit to her romanticism. Her reversals are neck breaking. Why she would spend time with Charles is beyond me. It's also a little shocking to see Poitier play this role although he does give it depth. There are some bad classic slave characters. This has some really clunky turns and the pulpy romance does not help. I'm not saying that this somehow supports slavery but it does have an idyllic version in addition to the more evil realistic one. There are lots to question but I'm uncertain about the intention.

I love this movie. It's got everything. I've watched it three times. I absolutely fell in love with Clark Gable's house - love the French-style courtyard with the house built around it, the terraces and the big wrought iron gates!! All style!!

19 years after "Gone with the Wind" Clark Gable returns as a very-much-like Rhett Butler role of Hamish Bond; no doubt for the pleasure of us moviegoers it's one of his best roles.A very rich ex-slaver takes an interest in a white girl suddenly being sold as a slave based upon the revelation that her mother was black. The story covers about six years and it is beautifully filmed; a picture worth seeing every few years.The Yankees do not look good in this movie; because the film was well researched and scores about 90% for historical accuracy. Union General Butler was much worse and more corrupt as portrayed here. It is also worth noting that MOST slave traders were in fact from New England, Massachusetts being the first slave state where slavery was used widely to do the Yankee's dirty work. America's #1 slave trader -- not a nice man like Clark Gable's portrayal, but one of the most rotten men in American history -- was Brown of Rhode Island, the founder of Brown University, built with slave-trade money. Mass-Conn-RI were loaded with slaves, about 40% of their population; very quiet about it these days.Today's empty-headed Hollywood is very confused about slavery. Devoted to "political correctness" but clueless to its meaning, most classic movies containing so much as one slave (or no slaves, as in Walt Disney's "Song of the South") are quietly not available except thru bootlegs. "Band of Angels" somehow escaped the PC Squad; readily available on DVD. 9 out of 10.

It's with some sense of poignancy that, in the late 1950s, the old guard of Hollywood began to finally fade away. With Band of Angels we have a middle-aged Clark Gable in one of his last ever archetypal he-man roles, Raoul Walsh, one of the few directors left who had been around since the beginning, and John Twist, a writer of adventures and romances who had started back in the silent era. These men were professionals of their day, still able to turn out a good production, and yet it was also clear they were becoming hopelessly out of time.Band of Angels is one of many pictures from this time to take a stand on racial issues, and yet even by the standards of the time it is a woefully misguided attempt. Rather than using Yvonne De Carlo's situation to demonstrate the horrors of slavery and make the point that a person's colour is skin deep, it seems to present her being branded black as something horrifying in itself. It holds up kindly masters in mitigation of slavery, and even goes so far as to condemn a slave (the Sidney Poitier character) who is ungrateful for this condescending attitude. There's also a full supporting cast of cringeworthy stereotypes – including a "mammy" – and all the drawling and eye-rolling that cinema had mostly put-paid to by this time. The makers of the movie meant well, I'm sure, but it is clearly a case of old Hollywood trying to do The Defiant Ones while still stuck in Gone with the Wind mode.And yet there is much to be said for old Hollywood. Walsh's dynamic direction brings an iconic look to scenes like Gable and De Carlo's kiss during the storm. He brings real intensity to the duel between Gable and Raymond Bailey, stealthily moving the camera forward as the two men get closer to each other (a trick he first used in his 1915 feature debut, Regeneration). Despite his age Gable is still very much the virile, eye-catching lead man, and this is a decent performance from him – check out the look in his eyes when he slaps his rival at the slave auction. There is also some achingly beautiful cinematography from Lucien Ballard, with some gorgeous Southern scenery and really effective lighting of interiors, achieving a look with candlelight and shadow that was hard to pull off in Technicolor. Band of Angels is, if nothing else, a movie to be enjoyed visually – and in this way more than any other harks back to a bygone age.