Fallen Angel (1945)

Directed by Otto Preminger

Screenplay by Harry Kleiner

Based on a story by Marty Holland

Music by David Raksin

Cinematography by Joseph LaShelle

Alice Faye as June Mills Stanton

Dana Andrews as Eric Stanton

Linda Darnell as Stella

Charles Bickford as Mark Judd, police detective

Anne Revere as Clara Mills

Bruce Cabot as Dave Atkins, jukebox salesperson

John Carradine as Professor Madley

Percy Kilbride as Pop, owner of Pop’s

Produced and distributed by 20th Century Fox

The opening of Fallen Angel starts right away with the perfect setup for a film noir. And, of course, it starts at night. The camera shoots over a bus driver’s shoulder, then switches to the driver’s point of view to show travel along a dark road. Street signs, one after the other, show the film’s credits. Once the credits end, the camera shoots again from over the bus driver’s shoulder. It’s a very effective way to draw the viewer in and establish the ambience.

The driver stops and throws Eric Stanton off the bus because he didn’t pay enough to go past the last stop. He’s let off in Walton. Crickets are chirping as Stanton walks to a diner: Pop’s diner. The viewer learns that Walton is a seaside town. The camera follows Stanton, and the beach can be seen behind Pop’s diner. The film’s soundtrack now includes the sound of waves rolling in on the beach. Stanton enters the diner and tries to order a hamburger, even though the place is closing. Pop gives in, but grudgingly.

Stella’s missing. The viewer doesn’t know yet who she is, but all the men in the diner (Judd, Pop, a police officer) are concerned about her disappearance. Atkins is in the diner servicing the jukebox, but he is not privy to the conversation among the three other men. Pop wonders if Stella committed suicide, but Judd says that she is not the type.

And then Stella walks in, and her entrance into the diner and into the movie tells a lot about her character. All the men are overjoyed at her return. Judd tells her, “I knew you’d be back.” Stella’s response and the look she gives Judd expresses her disappointment about that fact. Pop waits on her—and gives her Stanton’s hamburger.

Stanton is a con artist. Preminger shows how good Stanton is at his game because he cons his way into the racket by two other con artists who just arrived in town to stage a spiritualist show. He promises to get their tickets sold, and he does. The two con artists are so happy with his work that they want him to stay on, but he refuses. Someone else’s con game is too confining for him. People in Walton are a little suspicious of Stanton, and he’s the likely suspect when a murder is discovered in town. But there’s plenty of tension between Stella and practically every man in town—including Stanton—to keep the plot going before the murder.

My DVD included commentary by Eddie Muller and Susan Andrews, Dana Andrews’s daughter. Muller pointed out the long takes for which Preminger is famous. I did notice the swinging circle shot of the police car making a U-turn and taking June Mills Stanton away, and then the camera lighting on Eric Stanton as he realizes what just happened. Dana Andrews’s expression in this tight close-up, and in many other scenes, gives so much depth to a great performance in this movie.

The performances by the other actors are also superb. I got caught up in the story so easily because I didn’t find a false note anywhere in the film. The characters of June and Eric Stanton change and grow by the end of the movie, and I found it easy to believe the subtle transformations in both of them.

Some maintain that June is innocent and is taken in by Eric Stanton’s con game, but I’m not so sure. She’s no femme fatale (there probably isn’t room for more than one Stella in Walton!), but she’s smitten with Eric from the moment she sees him, when he comes calling on her sister Clara to convince her, and through her, the rest of the town, to come to the séance hosted by another con artist. June spots Eric from the top of the stairs, and the camera lingers on her as she descends, with her eyes lingering on him. She wants what she sees, and she gets what she wants. She’s the one who convinces her sister to go to the show. And it’s not because she believes in communing with the dead.

Little details count for a lot in Fallen Angel. For example, when Judd interrogates June Stanton, he paces around the interrogation room and runs the ring on his finger along the radiators—twice. The sound is grating and adds to the tension. When Stanton and Judd are talking at the counter back in Pop’s diner toward the end of the film, the shot includes the ocean waves rolling in on the beach that can be seen through the window behind them. Those waves were rolling in when Stanton first arrived in Walton and entered Pop’s diner, and they are rolling in again at the very satisfying conclusion.