Long ago, even before I was born, Otto Preminger was an accomplished pioneer of cinema noir, producing and directing the mysterious "Laura" starring Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, and Clifton Webb in 1944. He reteamed Tierney and Andrews in two other revered noirs I haven't seen, "Whirlpool" and "Where the Sidewalk Ends", and in 1952 directed "Angel Face" with Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons before launching into a string of censorship-challenging "problem" pictures, the most noirish-looking of which are "The Man with the Golden Arm", Bunny Lake Is Missing and the superb "Anatomy of a Murder". ("Advise and Consent" also has its noirish moments, not least the pioneering venture in to a D.C. gay bar on Don Murray's road to ruination that is the central crisis of the movie's plot.

Back in 1945, a year after the great success of "Laura", Preminger cast Dana Andrews (who strikes me as a very bland actor who was in a number of very good films of the late-1940s, the most heralded of which was "The Best Years of Our Lives")) as a drifter who is put off a Los Angeles/San Francisco bus for having gone beyond the destination of his ticket. Well-dressed, and immaculately coiffed, Eric Stanton spends a nickel of his last dollar for coffee in a diner that is closing. Actually, he also orders a hamburger, but it is taken by a waitress named Stella (Linda Darnell), whose boss thought she had left town. The diner owner and the other patron, Mark Judd (Charles Bickford) and Eric all gaze longingly at her. As the story proceeds, it becomes clear that all three are very smitten by her. I guess they must be "breast men." She has a lot to offer in that department, and those endowments seem to blind men to what a thoroughly unpleasant, egotistical, and exploitative person she is.

Usually, I prefer dark-tressed love objects, male or female to blond/e ones, but Alice Faye making a bid to get out of musicals, seems more attractive to me herein, and I wish Preminger had cast her as the femme fatale instead of Darnell... or had cast Gene Tierney as the dark-tressed woman... Faye plays June Mills, an improbably sheltered daughter of the town's much-revered, deceased mayor. She lives with an older, hyper-protective sister, Clara (Anne Revere), who frittered away her inheritance on a good-looking exploiter and is appalled at the prospect of her sister falling for a similar con.

Eric makes the whole town his mark in aiding a spiritualist (a very amusing John Carradine, who calls what he does a "ghost show") who carries a chastisement from beyond the grave for Clara's foolishness. The reminder does not endear Eric to Clara, but June falls in love as heavily with Eric (and for as little reason) as Eric does with Stella.

Eric decides to marry June, bilk her inheritance, and then run off with Stella, but never do the best-laid plans of men run more awry than in cinema noir. I don't want to spoil the plot by revealing how they run of the planned track, though they seem to me likely to have crashed in the Breen (censorship) office and wobbled off to a hard-to-believe ending for two of the five major characters.

Preminger liked long takes (though not going quite as far as Hitchcock in "Rope"), though the camera manned by the very expert Joseph LaShell (who was also photographed "Laura" and River of No Return for Preminger; My Cousin Rachel; The Apartment" and Billy Wilder's following three films) was not at all static. The black-and-white scenes look crisp and allow the actors (most of whom were not very gifted actors, the exceptions being Revere and Bickford) to convey emotion.

The movie is not as relentless as "Detour" or as witty as "Laura." It (especially the second half) is plenty melodramatic and involves a change of heart I find highly suspect.

It is better to look at than it is to think about. I guess many would say the same about Linda Darnell's "performance." Little as she was asked to do, she did less, yet was accepted again by Preminger (who wanted Lana Turner) in "Forever Amber." and appeared in films directed by John Ford, Preston Sturges, and Joseph Mankiewcz during the late 1940. The only explanation for this I can conjure is that she must have had a "special" relationship with Fox magnate Daryl F. Zanuck.

I'm also puzzled that Alice Faye (Alexander's Ragtime Band, In Old Chicago) was so enraged by her part being cut down that she quit making movies (for 17 years). She is onscreen more than anyone other than Andrews and, moreover, acquits herself adequately playing "love is blind [and deaf]."

AEOakley told me that Andrews turned down the Capt. Kirk role in TV's Star Trek because as a "movie star" it was beneath him (though he was an ex-star of any sort by then).

As with other Fox Noir DVDs, "Fallen Angel" has a bunch of trailers. It also has a commentary track with cinéma noir historian Eddie Muller and Dana Andrews's dutiful daughter Susan (campaigning to raise the regard in which her father's film work is held).


©2003, 2006 Stephen O. Murray (originally posted for the wrong "Fallen Angel"; there is also an interesting if typically opaque "Fallen Angels" that I recently watched.)




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD