Fallen Angel (1945)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Penniless con-man Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) gets thrown off the bus in the seaside town of Walton between L.A. and San Francisco. He is taken with sultry waitress Stella (Linda Darnell). He joins forces with spiritualist con-men Professor Madley and his assistant Joe Ellis. They have been trying to scam the town in spite of the powerful disbelieving spinster Clara Mills (Anne Revere) and her younger sister June (Alice Faye). The Mills lost their father and Madley pretends to have a public seance to contact the late Mr. Mills. Eric needs money to marry Stella and decides to get it out of June in a quickie marriage. He is terribly jealous of Stella's flirtations with other men.This is a noir directed by Otto Preminger coming a year after Laura. The dialog and performances are hard-boiled. The movie is pulpy goodness. The character June would work better as a young innocent. Alice Faye is playing a spinster and it's hard to see her falling for his simple self-assured flirtations. She has more worldliness than the role seems to suggest. Apparently, she didn't like the movie and left Hollywood for awhile over it. This has many of the trappings of good noir. Perminger's early prowess is on display.

Someone commented that this film is better than 'Laura'. I'd have to say that I agree, but that is no ringing endorsement for 'Fallen Angel', because there are at least two too many unbelievable characters.We get quite early on that Dana Andrews is your quintessential ne'er do well con artist. His cheeky move of marrying a virtuous girl with money (Alice Faye) to eventually use his new-found wealth to romance the very sexy Linda Darnell, is a tad outrageous.The only believable character is the teasing Darnell. She looks very fresh and lovely here.Alice Faye looks out of place in this film noir, as she had that oh so sweet blonde innocent look. I was literally scratching my head trying to figure out why such a nice girl would be so taken with the obvious bum Andrews.So, no, I didn't 'buy' the movie, as i didn't 'buy' 'Laura'. But the ending I must admit was very clever and a wonderful bit of off-type casting.The ending is almost as good as Preminger's ambiguous finish to his masterpiece 'Anatomy of a Murder'.I recently rewatched this film and I found myself enjoying it even more. Darnell is gorgeous in her role...someone's review talked about Linda as 'out of place' playing a 'bad girl' but I think she fits it perfectly.I fell in love with Ms. Darnell as 'Stella', much like every male in the cast did! 'Stella' is the classic film noir femme fatale. I came to appreciate Charles Bickford's role as the sadistic cop, but I still could not make heads or tails of Alice Faye's blind faith in the greasy Dana Andrews' character.This is a flawed film, but I must say, I enjoy it much more than 'Laura'. Preminger seems to have a real affection for the genre. The con man/spookchaser role played by John Carradine allows the actor to ham it up magnificently as only Carradine can.Poor Alice Faye still seems out of place. She at first appears as your Cardboard Virtuous Blonde. It's interesting that Faye tried to reinvent herself in this film noir film, it may have worked with a better screenplay. Closer examination of Ms. Faye reveals a very lovely woman. Her appeal is still quite obvious in this mid forties' flick.

This is truly a memorable film noir of the immediate post-War period, directed by the grand master, Otto Preminger. The star of the film is the 22 year-old Linda Darnell, as a hard-boiled, free-ranging girl on the make. She has only to raise her eyebrow to make men slobber, she knows it, and she is determined to use it to get 'a home and a ring'. Just as now, there was a problem with men not wanting to commit, so this leads to the noirish complications of this dark tale of passion. The change in Linda Darnell since her debut in films only six years earlier is astonishing. In her first film, HOTEL FOR WOMEN (1939, see my review, which six years later is still the only review of this film on IMDb), Darnell was a wide-eyed innocent and as fresh as a new loaf of bread just out of the oven. But, then, she was at that time only sixteen! It is a great tragedy that this talented actress died at the early age of 41 in a house fire, in 1965, ironically while watching herself on television (surely one of the most bizarre deaths of a movie star ever recorded). Dana Andrews is the languid male lead in this film, but here he is meaner-spirited than usual, showing by his callous and calculating nature that the feelings of others don't come into it. Natch, he falls for the irresistible dame and does unspeakable things in his desperation to have Darnell for himself. But there are other men who have their own ideas. Darnell works in Pop's Diner as a sultry waitress who sometimes shows up for work, sometimes not. Pop is played by Percy Kilbride (1888-1964), an excellent older character actor who is infatuated with Darnell, as everybody else is too, of course. I was somewhat thrown by one discrepancy in this film, however. A big deal is made of Andrews paying five cents for a cup of coffee in Pop's Diner at the beginning of the film, but throughout the film we continually see on the wall a sign saying that a cup of coffee costs ten cents. Come on, continuity!! When people get numbers wrong, I get jumpy. Charles Bickford plays a very cool cucumber, a local police chief who is always in Pop's Diner drinking that ambiguously-priced coffee. He eyes Andrews suspiciously throughout the film, who also spends rather a lot of time at the same diner counter, ogling the same Darnell, and drinking the same coffee. This later turns out to be important, though early in the story it is very down-played by the cunning Preminger. The script has some taut lines, such as Andrews saying 'Don't smile. Your face looks better without it.' But there are not as many wisecracks as one would like, and there is little time for any humour. Alice Faye plays a local 'good gal' who is from a rich family. She is very fetching, and one wonders why only Darnell gets all the attention. She does not sing in this film, although she does play the organ in church ('I was improvising,' she says to Andrews, who thinks she was playing some famous composer). Faye's older sister is well played by Anne Revere, who in this role might as well be called Anne Severe. (IMDb informs me that she was a direct descendant of Paul Revere, the hero of the American Revolution, so I had better show a bit more respect!) Severe is trying to save her little sister from falling into the clutches of Andrews, who wants to marry her for her money while being insanely infatuated by Darnell. Does this remind you of a film noir? Yes! And it goes on from there, getting more and more twisted up in knots of passion, fate, desperation, obsession, lust, you name it. The lighting is superb, so atmospheric, with all those striped effects even when there are no Venetian blinds anywhere to justify them, brooding darkness, but with spots in all the right places, just perfect for the genre. Preminger's direction is flawless. This is one of those velvety-smooth noir classics, there's no doubt about that. And the Fox Noir Series DVD release is made from a perfectly preserved negative, not an old print, so the quality of the images is as crisp as if the film were made only last week.

A seedy environment, reckless actions and the infatuation of a femme fatale. These elements of film noir are essential in Fallen Angel in portraying a secretly yet deeply morally corrupt society by following the journey of the protagonist.Drifter Eric Stanton finds himself in the town of Walton, a place whose exterior seems wholesome but a number of the residents are the opposite conversing in cafes, dance halls and quiet spots. Most notably local waitress Stella who oozes sexuality just by being in a room evident in her opening scene. As with most male protagonist in film noirs Eric immediacy becomes fixated on the emotionally lethal Stella to the point of becoming involved with a less tainted woman in order to steal money, all as a result of Eric's blind passion for Stella. Delving deeper into their relationship Eric and Stella have common ground; both are searching for their vision of a perfect lifestyle and won't let morals get in the way. It becomes somewhat appealing to see these fragile figures together mixing in their immorality. Yet the visions they both share soon leads them to dark ends.Fallen Angel's plot reaches its core with the murder of Stella evokes dangers for Eric. Whilst the situation turns nasty, Eric runs to safety with June, the less tainted woman he married solely for her money. However this relationship which had been built upon deception turns two dimensional. It offers a great dynamic to Fallen Angel as Eric finally finds the permanency he had been drifting years for in June, whose kind and loving personality leads Eric to a more pure existence. Kudos has to be given to Alice Faye, who makes her performance as June one of heartfelt sentiment that we cheer for her to sway Eric to moral goodness.And with good reason as the climax reveals a senior figure in Walton as the murderer not only gave a pessimistic view of amorality in society but also mirrored how Eric's life could have been if his infatuation with Stella had gotten to more extreme heights. This reflective realisation and the whole dynamic of Eric drifting between the worlds of evil and good make Fallen Angel a provocative character piece.