With these characters Dana Andrews seldom goes wrong; and here in 'Fallen Angel' his performance is very creditable: never an actor with a wide range of performance what he did do well he did very well.

Here his character suits him: a rascal and a chancer, a low beat and a drop out, but smart, aware, angry, resourceful and determined; teamed with a fellow cast of equally, if different, anglers and no-good characters.

Nice flashes of physical brutality with a charged hint of that exact kind of male "driving" that can cause trouble for unwary women and competing men at each of the rare occurrences of outright violence.

The direction, scene setups and cinematography often raise this film even higher in quality. Lovely flowing camera positions follow, react to and even anticipate onscreen moves. Long takes are used effectively whenever 'Fallen Angel' gets really dark and close between it's trapped characters.

Sex and lust bubble between Dana and both his fiances nicely and there's never a doubt in my mind that every character has either got a sex life, had a sex life, or at least has a sex drive! They don't just want to fall in love. Or pretend to. There's direct human sexual motivation at play.

The murder victim and the police investigation and the eventual culprit are all nicely handled although a few times 'Fallen Angel' does require either extra patience or suspension of disbelief from the viewer due either to clunky plot devices or a slightly un-captivating narrative force deriving from the writer and director. A little more narrative vibrancy, more cinematic treatment, more film noir sensibility would have helped me to let the film lead me where it would.

My final score is a 7/10 but I've really rounded up a high 6 a little, mainly because the fluid handling of the camera, scene set ups and flashes of expressive cinematography do completment a cast suited to their roles and produce a film that as a whole is memorable and interesting if not quite successful as a dramatic story. Pragmatically this would rate a 6 for me but I choose to turn half a blind eye to its more conventional failings and emphasis it's stylistic and tonal value.

Those who wish to place Otto Preminger in the pantheon of great film auteurs can certainly point to this stylish film as a splendid example of the director's talent at its prime during his Twentieth Century Fox contract years before he became famous as the self-promoting independent director/producer of controversial, censorship-busting films. Back in 1945, however, he had the good fortune to be surrounded by many of the best technicians Daryl Zanuck had hired --foremost among them here, the staff cinematographer Joe LaShelle (Oscar for "Laura") whose shadowy lighting and inventive long moving camera takes add enormously to the "noir" atmosphere of this film. As always, there is no way to tell whether LaShelle or Preminger came up with these unusual images, but they are exceptionally effective.bWhat's more, the film is perfectly cast down to the smallest role: Linda Darnell is particularly effective as the slutty tough girl who knows what she wants; and middle-aged Alice Faye, having put on a little weight since her Don Ameche musical days, looks and acts exactly like a lonely and desperate small-town woman who can't help loving the wrong man. Unfortunately, the screenplay has even more holes in it than the average swiss-cheese film noir of its day. Andrews enters the scene as an obvious drifter and con man and does nothing from then on to change anyone's opinion of him. Despite his lack of money and sleaziness, we are asked to believe that no woman, however pious or promiscuous, can resist him. If you are willing to suspend lots and lots of disbelief, this film has many wonderful atmospheric moments expertedly staged by the Viennese director Today, lots of people think of Preminger as the consummate cinematic con-artist. In this film, for once, the artist outweighed the con.

Penniless con-man Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) gets thrown off the bus in the seaside town of Walton between L.A. and San Francisco. He is taken with sultry waitress Stella (Linda Darnell). He joins forces with spiritualist con-men Professor Madley and his assistant Joe Ellis. They have been trying to scam the town in spite of the powerful disbelieving spinster Clara Mills (Anne Revere) and her younger sister June (Alice Faye). The Mills lost their father and Madley pretends to have a public seance to contact the late Mr. Mills. Eric needs money to marry Stella and decides to get it out of June in a quickie marriage. He is terribly jealous of Stella's flirtations with other men.

This is a noir directed by Otto Preminger coming a year after Laura. The dialog and performances are hard-boiled. The movie is pulpy goodness. The character June would work better as a young innocent. Alice Faye is playing a spinster and it's hard to see her falling for his simple self-assured flirtations. She has more worldliness than the role seems to suggest. Apparently, she didn't like the movie and left Hollywood for awhile over it. This has many of the trappings of good noir. Perminger's early prowess is on display.