Angels of Darkness Reviews

Three impoverished prostitutes, Darnell, Cortese, and Padovani, are thrown out of their only home, a bordello slated for destruction. Darnell returns home to live with her mother, but townsfolk, knowing her profession, shun her, and she leaves to live a nomadic existence. Cortese is lucky enough to find Quinn, who proposes, but on their wedding day her past is revealed. She runs off and is killed by a speeding auto. Padovani, the only one who finds peace is content with her small child. Badly dubbed, the film is a terrible tear-jerker, insipid and boring for the most part, and for the other part just boring. This disaster did work a small miracle, however, for Anthony Quinn, whose career had been sliding downhill fast. He befriended Masina and through her met her husband, director Federico Fellini; she also got him the role opposite her in LA STRADA that made Quinn an overnight international sensation, no longer the slick villain, the crazy Indian, or the suave gangster but a grimy slob with a cruel streak and a hidden conscience that sometimes surfaced to save his repugnant character, a type Quinn would exploit in one subsequent film after another. This miserable film was not even complete when Fellini began shooting LA STRADA.