Despite the title, there are no fallen angels in Otto Preminger’s 1945 film noir about a con man who ends up in a small coastal town in California and gets mixed up with two very different dames.
Essentially a murder mystery, Fallen Angel was Preminger’s follow-up to the far more successful Laura. It’s stylishly made with a killer ending, but suffers from numerous plot holes and a robotic performance from leading man Dana Andrews.
Based on an obscure pulp novel by Marty Holland (a pseudonym for Mary Holland), the film is best remembered as Alice Faye’s last before a self-enforced 17-year sabbatical. The former musical comedy star was said to be so peeved at the way Preminger and Fox maven Darryl F. Zanuck cut her scenes, she didn’t make another film until State Fair in 1962.
Andrews plays drifter Eric Stanton, who inveigles a job promoting ticket sales for Professor Madley (John Carradine), a 'mentalist" who claims to communicate with the spirits of the dead, like an early version of John Edward.
Stanton seems infatuated with Stella (Linda Darnell), a blowsy waitress at the local diner. She resists his initial advances but succumbs after he offers to bribe her to marry him. Stella is a looker but she’s so hard-bitten, cold and calculating you wonder what Eric sees in her.
To carry out his plan, Stanton starts wooing lonely but wealthy spinster June Mills (Alice Faye). Despite the disapproval of her elder sister Clara (Anne Revere), June soon gives in - another glaring implausibility.
A sudden murder investigated by former New York cop Mark Judd (Charles Bickford) adds spice to the proceedings, with a far from predictable outcome. The title comes from one of the more memorable lines uttered by June to Eric: 'Love alone can make a fallen angel rise, for only two can enter paradise."
Andrews hated the script, calling it \"unbelievable\" and in 'bad taste,\" and only took the role after he was threatened with suspension. I wouldn’t question it on taste grounds, but he had a point about credibility.
