Fallen Angel (1945)
Country: US
Technical: bw 98m
Director: Otto Preminger
Cast: Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, Charles Bickford
Synopsis:
A no-good chiseller arrives in a sleepy California town and promotes a phony medium act to impress a café waitress. When she smells a fellow loser he resolves to win her by other means.
Review:
In this follow-up to Laura for Fox, Preminger chose a pulp novel hot off the press by Marty Holland with one of the least likeable heels ever to grace the genre, no doubt sensing Andrews' forte as an actor. (In fact, it deviates from classic noir in that the anti-hero is not a fall guy and there is no femme fatale either, though the dialogue between them is typical and one of the strengths of the screenplay. It also foreshadows Thompson's The Killer Inside Me in its double-dealing lover boy scenario and Bickford's penchant for beating about the face.) As for 'little Miss Alice Faye', she may seem out of place in all this sleaze but she contributes the most affecting performance as a woman seizing what might be her last opportunity to get out and experience the world. Despite these points of interest the film rarely rises above the routine, however, and the final reel's 'reformation' of the lead character is hard to swallow.
Country: US
Technical: bw 98m
Director: Otto Preminger
Cast: Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, Charles Bickford
Synopsis:
A no-good chiseller arrives in a sleepy California town and promotes a phony medium act to impress a café waitress. When she smells a fellow loser he resolves to win her by other means.
Review:
In this follow-up to Laura for Fox, Preminger chose a pulp novel hot off the press by Marty Holland with one of the least likeable heels ever to grace the genre, no doubt sensing Andrews' forte as an actor. (In fact, it deviates from classic noir in that the anti-hero is not a fall guy and there is no femme fatale either, though the dialogue between them is typical and one of the strengths of the screenplay. It also foreshadows Thompson's The Killer Inside Me in its double-dealing lover boy scenario and Bickford's penchant for beating about the face.) As for 'little Miss Alice Faye', she may seem out of place in all this sleaze but she contributes the most affecting performance as a woman seizing what might be her last opportunity to get out and experience the world. Despite these points of interest the film rarely rises above the routine, however, and the final reel's 'reformation' of the lead character is hard to swallow.
Country: US
Technical: bw 98m
Director: Otto Preminger
Cast: Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, Charles Bickford
Synopsis:
A no-good chiseller arrives in a sleepy California town and promotes a phony medium act to impress a café waitress. When she smells a fellow loser he resolves to win her by other means.
Review:
In this follow-up to Laura for Fox, Preminger chose a pulp novel hot off the press by Marty Holland with one of the least likeable heels ever to grace the genre, no doubt sensing Andrews' forte as an actor. (In fact, it deviates from classic noir in that the anti-hero is not a fall guy and there is no femme fatale either, though the dialogue between them is typical and one of the strengths of the screenplay. It also foreshadows Thompson's The Killer Inside Me in its double-dealing lover boy scenario and Bickford's penchant for beating about the face.) As for 'little Miss Alice Faye', she may seem out of place in all this sleaze but she contributes the most affecting performance as a woman seizing what might be her last opportunity to get out and experience the world. Despite these points of interest the film rarely rises above the routine, however, and the final reel's 'reformation' of the lead character is hard to swallow.