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).
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
