Fallen Angel (1945)
Reviewed in February 2010
Director: Otto Preminger. Cast: Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, Anne Revere, Percy Kilbride, John Carradine, Olin Howland, Charles Bickford, Bruce Cabot, Dorothy Adams. Screenplay: Harry Kleiner (based on the novel by Marty Holland).

Photo © 1945 20th Century Fox
Hard-working car engine even before music sets in; road-sign opening creidts; again with La Shelle and Raksin; Sooty black lighting, even inside a bus; Walton, halfway between LA and SF; LD, checking out DA but contemptuous: "Not okay – he got his coffee, let him pay for it"; La Shellean tracking crane through dark city streets; Prof. Madley & Ellis conducting seances in the hotel that AR wnats to quash; "Cheap, vulgar tricks of spiritualism"; incongruous detail and richness of AR's and AF's breakfast table and curtained windows; JC realizes that Abraham Mills has left $25,000 in stocks and bonds with sisters AR and AF; Pan over crowd at the revival meeting, push into the dancehall with DA & LD - not so creepily depopulated as Laura; DA with AF: dinner you didn't like and movie you didn't like - drink - "Let's not miss any of the little things that make up your happy life"; AR is going to give up her entire portion of the SF-vaulted money to AF - a sort of terse lesbian protectiveness; DA is going to take AF to Toscanini conducting SF Symphony, introduce AF to T; Surprise marriage in SF, motivated by false promise of Symphony concert; DA: "I haven't even kissed her - matter of fact, I can have it annulled"; LD has been found murdered, when we're only expecting AF to reveal knowledge of DA's secret plot; Laura's terrified maid appears here as LD's anxious, observant, suspicious neighbor; Charles Bickford shows up and starts slapping the shit out of BC to establish alibis (which are quickly established through more neutral menas!); AR confesses that she once got burned by love, big time - but AF is still hoping that DA will change; DA in SF hotel with AF: "What a dump!," four years on Bette davis!; DA freaking out: "So you oculd drive me nuts with that quiet way of yours?"; AF getting testy: "I'm not wasting my money, it's yours as much as mine - burn it up, tear it up, do whatever you want with it!!"; DA confesses feeling like "a complete washout at 30"; B


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