Harry Belafonte, who died yesterday at 96, is probably better known these days as a civil rights activist than singer or actor, but he was a formidable presence on all fronts. While he was merely serviceable in the great screen version of Carmen Jones (where they strangely dubbed his singing voice), he gave an interesting turn in a later film, The Angel Levine, as a divine being sent from heaven to save a troubled Orthodox Jew. My review of that curiosity is below. RIP.

• The Angel Levine

4/23/22 (Sat)

When you hear that an Orthodox Jew, played by Zero Mostel, is visited by an angel named Levine, you don’t expect to see Harry Belafonte. But that’s the premise in this oddball 1970 work adopted from a Bernard Malamud story about a modern-day Job and an emissary from Heaven sent to save him.

Zero, old and tired with a dying wife, heavy debt, significant medical issues and a life going nowhere, comes to feel that God has abandoned him. Then he enters his kitchen one day to find a black man claiming to be an angel. Even after the initial shock fades, he questions Harry’s motives, especially when the latter tells him that he can’t do miracles unless Zero believes in him – Zero responds reasonably that he can’t believe in him unless he performs a miracle. That chicken-and-egg question is actually a sly route to a meditation on the nature of faith.

It’s not quite clear at first whether Harry is really an angel: he swears, doesn’t seem to have magical powers (other than the fact that Fanny’s health improves whenever he’s around), and gets Zero’s medicine by stealing it from a shop. Having been given one chance back on earth to earn his wings (he complains that all the white women just slipped into Heaven while he has to pay his dues), Harry tries to make up with his own girlfriend, who’s unaware that he’s actually dead. She initially rejects him, having been played the fool once too often, but gradually gives in and agrees to reunite if he’ll marry her (that was evidently still a thing back in 1970). Harry obviously can’t do that, being dead and all, but can’t tell her why, prompting her to refuse to have anything to do with him. In Billy Bigelow fashion, he slaps her hard, ending things decisively and bitterly.

His own personal mission crushed and unable to convince Zero, he goes to the roof and stands on the ledge lashing out at the world. Zero, shocked, lures him back to the house, but ultimately Zero’s anger at God for his own difficult life leads Harry to disappear in despair. After thinking it over, Zero, wanting desperately to believe in something, goes to Harlem in search for his angel. He comes upon a black synagogue – a real-life Ethiopian temple in Harlem, including the real-life rabbi – but finds no sign of Harry. In an ambiguous ending, a black feather blows down as he walks the streets but remains tantalizingly out of reach despite his frantic efforts to grab it. Did Harry finally get his wings, from which he dropped a feather for Zero? Is salvation forever out of grasp? (Feathers and an Orthodox Jew also played a curious part in Arthur Miller’s Incident at Vichy.)

The movie can be cheesy, and its attempt to mix Malamud’s Jewish-centered story with a black sensibility is awkward. By humanizing Harry and giving him a back story, it muddles the message that it seems to be aspiring to; the angel should be as out of reach as that feather. Harry was the driving force behind the project – the first words on the screen are “Belafonte Productions presents” – and clearly wanted to give the black characters greater depth. His story was not uninteresting, especially with Gloria Foster’s sharp performance as his seen-it-all-before girlfriend, but it’s a separate film.

Zero gives a beautifully modulated performance as the put-upon Jew, and Harry, though not as subtle, is certainly charismatic as the angel. Ján Kadár, he of the tremendous The Shop on Main Street, was less sure-footed here, as with the angel’s labored pursuit of Zero in the street. He did his best to expand the canvas with a few outside scenes, such as the drug store and bar, but most of the action takes place in the home and felt rather stage bound; I suspect this could be a stage play with some tweaking. There were fine performances by Ida Kamińska, who was so good in Kadár’s Main Street, and Milo O’Shea, though he was a strange choice for a Jewish doctor. The movie is more interesting for what it wanted to say than what it actually said.