Angel

With an unknown writer/director and set against the very real and contemporary backdrop of ‘the Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, Neil Jordan’s Angel was one of the first films commissioned by Channel 4 and encapsulates everything that was risk taking and innovative about this new broadcaster’s approach to filmmaking. Jordan’s cinematic influences from Nicholas Ray to Wim Wenders can be seen in the film’s revenge structure and elegant visual style.

Saxophonist Danny (played by Stephen Rea in the first of eight appearances in Jordan’s films) hunts down the loyalist murder gang who killed the young girl (Veronica Quilligan) he had befriended. The film’s disinterest in formal politics in favour of the director’s concern with a ‘metaphysics of violence’ would capture the attention of such luminaries as Stanley Kubrick.

Although made for TV, Angel’s visually poetic style and metaphysical approach to the subject matter caught the interest of then distributor Stephen Woolley who encouraged Channel 4 to give the film a UK cinema release. Its theatrical success would embolden the Channel to engage more with the possibilities of cinema whilst the partnership of Woolley and Jordan would lead to some of the decade's (and beyond) most distinctive and defining films - The Company of Wolves (1984) Mona Lisa (1986) and The Crying Game (1992).

With thanks to Park Circus and Channel 4.

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