The Tarnished Angels (1957)

Perhaps Douglas Sirk’s most underrated film (possibly because it’s in ravishing black and white, not lurid colour) and certainly one of his greatest, this adaptation of William Faulkner’s novel Pylon focuses on a reporter (Rock Hudson) fascinated by a group of stunt fliers striving to get by in the American South after the First World War. This is a story of desire and deceit, fear of failure, dysfunctional family and postwar blues.