***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel”- A Film Review

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night- Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel”- A Film Review

DVD Review


By Josh Breslin  

Fallen Angel, starring Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, directed by Otto Preminger, 1945

[Alright I have had my say about my less than utter devotion to the film noir genre in a recent introduction to Josh Breslin’s film review of the adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s short story The Killers (see, Archives, dated January 12, 2019). That still stands. What does not still stand though is the utterly crass response, a respond worthy of wounded elephants, when I mentioned that guys like Josh and Sam Lowell had ill-spent their youths in dark, popcorn-festered Saturday afternoon double feature matinees rather than breathing some innocent fresh air. Let me put it this way the kindest response was by Si Lannon (as usual) who speculated that as much as we are collectively opposed to capital punishment for criminal activities that offend against humankind that perhaps some exceptions should be made particularly egregious cases, mine. It went downhill from the gist of sentiment being that I never had been manly enough to understand the genre having been pampered in my youth up there in swank Hudson River digs        

That hurt whether it is true or not but remember that I am just enough younger and less poverty-driven conscious that those guys although having been through life none of these guys have to worry about where their next meal is coming from-very definitely don’t in some kind of survival of the fittest sense since they survived unlike some of the guys who as Seth Garth has said “laid down their heads in bloody Vietnam or like their icon Markin as a result of that experience.

Still on the face of it and I go with my having been involved with something like forty thousand reviews over the past few decades (not as a writer, Jesus no, not for a long time since that is such a perilous and cutthroat business depending on nothing but your last review and maybe not even that at some journals), the premise behind the noir is not something that ever wowed me, the photography, the black and white scene setting and sequel effects yes. The storyline and shabby treatment of women, even femmes leave a lot to be desired.

Yes, yes, I know we live in the #MeToo era and that has some effect even going back to the noirs but shabby is not too far a stretch that these films were only keeping the so-called feminine mystique alive. Take one example, and not the worse of the lot, Jane Greer’s role in Out Of The Past where she is treated by Robert Mitchum as so much eye candy to be looked up and down and back again. Treated by mobster Kirk Douglas and noting but an appendage. No wonder the woman had ot make her own way, her own space as best she could. If she had to get a little gun crazy, start shooting to keep herself going that was part of the overhead for her to stay alive. Hey, the guys knew what they were getting into and still came after her-and not just for her charms. It might be hard to make a feminist-friendly film, and maybe back then probably impossible but that is no reason for guys doing film reviews today to get all gushy about this genre. Touche. Greg Green]        

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As I have mentioned at the start of other reviews in this genre I am an aficionado of film noir, especially those 1940s detective epics like the film adaptations of Dashiell Hammet’s Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. There is nothing like that gritty black and white film, ominous musical background (one can tell without watching the beginning of the film, the credits, that a noir is on hand, or noir-influenced and those shadowy fugitive moments to stir the imagination. Others in the genre like Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and Out Of The Past rate a nod because in addition to those attributes mentioned above they have classic femme fatales to add a little off-hand spice to the plot line, and, oh yah, they look nice too. Beyond those classics this period (say, roughly from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s) produced many black and white film noir set pieces, some good, some not so good. For plot line, and plot interest, the film under review, Fallen Angel, is under that former category. This film is an example of what 1940s film noir was all about, maybe not the best but still more than passable.

Once you have started to get fixated on crime noir films a key question that inevitably comes up is the femme fatale, good or bad, although not every crime noir film had them. Fallen Angel does, although rather unusually this femme fatale (played by sultry big-lipped Linda Darnell) is working in a one-arm joint (come on now you know what that is right? A hash house, a diner, a road house, a dew-drop in and the person serving them off the arm, one arm see, is none other than Darnell as the magnet waitress, Stella). Now all femme fatales, at least the ones I have seen in film (and a few, okay more than a few, that I have been run over by in life), have some kind of shady past and/or have gone wrong by hooking up with a wrong gee. Some of them have put on high class- airs (like Gilda in the movie of the same name and The Lady From Shang-hai both played by sultry, very sultry, let me get my handkerchief out Rita Hayworth) and others, like the Stella role Ms. Darnell plays here, are just hard-boiled gold-diggers from the wrong side of the tracks.

And that little fact is what has all the boys crazy here, and also drives the plot line.
The Great Depression and World War II unhinged a lot of the certainties that earlier American society took for granted. Those mega-events left a lot of loose-end people struggling, struggling hard to find their place in the sun, or at least some dough to help find that place. And that notion goes a long way in explaining why down-at-the-heels Eric (played by Dana Andrews) find himself on the left coast (California before the post- World War II land’s end explosion westward, westward from any east) with no dough and no prospects. But that doesn’t stop him from drawing a bee-line to femme fatale Darnell when he was unceremoniously dropped off in some backwater California ocean town. But brother Eric, take a ticket, get in line, because every other guy on the left coast, including the very unglamorous hash house owner, has big ideas, or wants to have big ideas about setting up house with this two-timing brunette waitress. (Personally I don’t see it but I run to perky blondes and fire-haired red heads although, truth to tell, a few of those femmes I have been run over by, mentioned above, have been brunettes too.) But when a man, as men will do, is smitten well there it is. There are no hoops big enough that he will not roll through and that is where the plot thickens. See Stella, she from the wrong side of the tracks born, wants a home with a picket fence like all the other girls and if you don't have the cash, the cash in hand, then get lost, brother. Be a long gone daddy.  

Needless to say old Eric is ready to move heaven and earth to get the dough for that white picket-fenced house. And here is his scam. A scam that played right has worked since time immemorial. Go where the money is. In that one-horse town, ocean-fronted or not, the dough resides with two prominent sisters who have some dough left from their father’s estate. So Eric plays up to one sister, June, (the pretty one, of course, played by Alice Faye) and through a convoluted series of events they wind up married. Ms. Darnell was not pleased by this turn of event, as you can imagine.

Although Stella not being pleased was cut short by a little problem, she was murdered on the night of Eric’s honeymoon with June. And all signs lead to him as the stone-cold killer- the frame is on, no question. But also “no question” is that he is not that kind of guy. But just step back a minute and remember that point about having to take a ticket to line up for Stella's affections. Plenty of guys (and at least one woman) had motive. See the film and figure who that was. Like I say this not the best of the 1940s crime noirs for plot line but is interesting enough. And the film was directed by Otto Preminger so you know the black and white cinematography shadows and contrasts will be just fine.

Angels Too Close To The Ground-With Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel In Mind

Angels Too Close To The Ground-With Otto Preminger’s Fallen Angel In Mind

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Fallen Angel, starring Dana Andrews, Alice Faye, Linda Darnell, Charles Bickford

Who knows where it all started to go bad, where the luck ran out, where a guy, a smart guy, a street smart guy, took the tumble, became the fall guy for every crooked gee to take aim at, every gee to go target shooting for fallen angels in this good green breast of earth. Yeah, Eric, Eric Stanton if anybody was asking although probably not in New York City and points west not if they had sense enough to know that this hell’s angel was built for the tumble, had had a tough stretch, let the gambling in Vegas get the best of him. Got tossed out of that town (or to hear him tell it, tell it when he was on his uppers so take that for what it is worth, left before he got tossed out) just like a million other guys who couldn’t figure the dice, couldn’t keep the count at blackjack, let the wheel hit red too many times and wound up in North Vegas nursing his wounds before taking that first early morning Greyhound out and hoping whatever north, south east, west way he was heading it was better than that last stretch of tough luck for a guy on the make.

Yeah Eric took that early morning Greyhound with a buck in his pocket, just another grifter drifting west because east was played out for him. Hit L.A. first as a bust. Figured to drift north and to hit Frisco running after seeing what was what in the city of angels had to say, and maybe work up some publicity work for guys or dames who needed such built-ups like he had done in the big city back east before he got antsy and sold out to go to greener pastures, to go live the easy life. Had walked to the bus station to save dough for a cup of joe to ward off the chill and the prospects of sitting next to some overweight snorer, some wayward mother who let her kid run wild on his head or some homely dame who took the bus as her version of the lonely hearts club. Losers, yeah, losers but as he stepped up on the bus giving his ticket to the suspicious bus driver who wondered, wondered out loud whether this stumblebum was going to stiff him for the trip to Frisco since he had only bought a  ticket to Monterey down the peninsula.          

Sometimes a guy’s luck, our boy Eric’s luck, just plain runs out, and this time that wise- guy bus-driver decided that he was the president of the damn company or something, had a stake in turning a down on his luck back on his heels and him, the bus driver, just making chump change wages and hard luck stories. Decided that Eric, a little dusty from the road, looking like maybe he had slept, eaten, washed up too good of late was a primo candidate for the toss. So he rousted Eric, who was doing the classic no dough sleeping gag though the last stop. But no go now as he took the toss in Watsonville, the only thing that town had going for it was the ocean you could hear in the background as the bus roared off into the Frisco-bound night.   

So Eric walked, walked to the waterfront, figuring he could find a flop at the Seaman’s Mission giving some story about how he had missed his ship or something (and he really had, really had missed his ship that is) when the hunger got to him as he stood in front of Pop’s Eats, a low rent diner where maybe he could promote himself a burger and cup of joe, maybe a slice of Mom’s pie with cheese that such places always touted if the cook was a bastard about the meat. So he entered the joint, cast his fate to the wind once again. Asked the Pop of the joint for a cup of joe, asked for a burger with the works figuring if he ate it up the worse that would happen is he would be pearl-diving for the night, no sweat he had done that plenty when he was down and out before.  

Then she came in, Miss Round-heels no question, he had known the type all his life but couldn’t stop looking at this one. Knew she was a ball-buster, a bitch, a heart-breaker and wouldn’t think twice about it once she was done with a guy as she walked over him. Yeah, just another tramp like back home where grew up in Carver before heading to New Jack City. All softness and swerve, big flowing black hair, Spanish laughing eyes to die for (on the surface, surface laughing)   all combined together to give a smoldering, sultry, swaying piece of dynamite in cashmere and skirt. It turned out she was Pop’s waitress, Stella, aren’t all these tramp angel babies always called Stella or something like that, who had gone on a three day tryst with some fast-talking salesman who left her in the lurch in Gilroy to go back to his ever-loving wife and kids. He could tell at a glance though that Pops was crazy for her as old and homely as he was, would have given her anything she wanted if she took look one at him. He could tell a couple of other guys who were nursing their coffees once she came in were crazy for her too against all reason.

Naturally Eric without even a murmur of doubt knew that he was going to take dead aim at her, going to play with hell’s angels and maybe change his luck, who knew stranger things had happened. And so over the next several days he made his big moves, played to her genetic come hither vanities and had some success. What put him over the top with Stella was the big deal everybody made out of his work when he got the whole two-bit town sitting quietly at a buck a head in the town auditorium listening to his newly found partner, a wise guy séance con man. What pulled everybody in was when this June who was the conscience of the town after he had played to her vanities gave her approval. Got Stella all worked up too about the fortune-teller like he was the real thing. Right there Eric should have taken up the con man’s offer to work together heading north but that was not Eric’s play, would not have satisfied that itch he had every time he thought about his fallen angel.

You never know about dames, even heart-breakers and tramps, because as Eric let Stella get deeper under his skin she started getting middle class dreams in a hurry. Like Eric, and maybe that was why he fell so hard, Stella was from nowhere, had grown up with nothing, nothing but unfulfilled “from hunger” wanting habits. So if Eric wanted to share her bed he had to show her more than a couple of cheap trick tickets. Wanted a ring and marriage. And Eric bought into that bit. Really lost his moorings once she put the full court press on. Here is his scheme which tells you how bad he really had it, and why he should have put his thumb out on that Pacific Coast Highway any direction the minute the idea entered his head. He was going to wine and dine that June who gave her approval for the séance. Not only wine and dine her but marry her so he could get the dough her father had left her which she was entitled to when she got married. Nice trick to marry one gal to get to marry another. Guess what it worked, the getting married part anyway. Jesus.       

This is where things got dicey, where dealing with a two-timing tramp like Stella was a no-win situation. (Stella made it clear to Eric that she was still playing the field while he made his play for June and their happiness. Ouch.) Stella had left a long, long string of broken hearts and it went to figure that not every guy was ready to take the brush-off with the grain of salt. One fine morning Stella wound up dead, very dead in her apartment. The number one fall guy: drifter Eric. No way was Eric going to get out from under this one, he might as well as have had a bullseye on his back, not if one Mark Judd has anything to do with it. See Judd was one of the guys who had an interest in Stella. Had taken his brush-off with less that equanimity but he was all cop before he had retired, a booze problem forced him out people said. He was going to get to the bottom of Stella’s murder even if, or maybe especially if, he could frame Eric for it. He almost did, almost had Eric on the ropes (along with that wife June who was going to stand  by her man no matter what even if he still was half in love with a tramp).

But let’s go back to the beginning, to the night she came all fire and smoke into his life. Back too that first night when he honed in on Stella. Pops saw that chemical reaction between them even if took a while to play out and if there was one thing he wanted for himself in this wicked old world that was Stella. Stella or nothing. So at the final confrontation in the diner after Eric figured out all the pieces once he got some smarts back after the twists Stella had put him through Pops played his hand for keeps. Played it wrong as it turned out because just as he was to reach under the counter for his rat-tat-tat Judd came in gun blaring to snuff out the old bastard’s life.          

Eric, well, Eric finally got religion, finally figured the allure of every tramp he was attracted to was a losing proposition so he rode off into the sunset with June. And that cool pile of dough she had to spend on whatever his next big idea would be. If June were smart though she would make sure she looked over her shoulder if some new tramp came into town. Yeah, it’s tough to love a fallen angel.     

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman- Angels Flying Too Close To The Ground –With Otto Preminger’s “Fallen Angel” In Mind

…she, June Miller, wanted to make sure, after she was gone, whenever that was, and her attorney went to her private safety deposit book and retrieved her notes, that everybody got the story, the story of her, Eric, and that tramp Stella, right, got it right far away from the way Pop over at his two-bit dinner where Stella worked before the fall had told it,told it so that it entered the common town wisdom just that way he talked it up. Pop, the old goat, who was half in love with Stella himself. Got it right too away from the way the newspapers had blared it out every which way like there was nothing but a sex sin city running in old beat down ocean front Bayside City. Got it right too against Eric who almost took the fall for that damn tramp’s murder. And got it right against Judd, Judd the hick ex-cop from New York City who did take the fall, took the big step for Stella’s murder. And she, June Miller, should know, know all the details, after all she had been the other woman, the mistreated, abused left behind other woman, the angel sticking by her man when the deal when down, according to the newspapers and to old Pop. But let her tell the story, tell it true, although it will never make any newspaper, never be the subject of endless morning breakfast hams and eggs, over easy, with a cup of joe, twenty-five cents please, at Pop’s, or be the subject of pillow talk between she and Eric.

She knew Stella was a tramp, knew like every woman knows, every woman who keeps tabbed up on such things, from the first day she sashayed off that heading north Pacific coastal highway bus that stopped once a day at what passed for downtown Bayside City. She had every guy looking, looking with that Saturday night bed room look, even guys with their woman beside them, all of a sudden bending down to tie their mother taught double-tied shoes to catch a glance of her, and not catch hell. She was a looker all right, tall, long legs and not afraid to show them (hell, glad to show them), big brown hair all wavy to one side, the fashion then, brown eyes, dark silky complexion, big ruby red lips that spoke of sex, sex and more sex. Her clothes though, strictly off the cheap rack, and that bus ride, showed she was from hunger, like a lot of west coast pretty girls were back then, looking to move on from wherever they hailed from, looking for some little ring and respectability, or at least a good time.

Later, after Stella got a job serving them off the arm at Pop’s bringing extra business just by being there, dating every guy who had two dimes to rub together for a dance, quarters for some cheap low- shelf scotch, and dollars for some Woolworth’s faux jewelry, she told everybody her story about being from nowhere San Diego, and how she had to split, after some unexplained hard time with an ex-boyfriend. June though then with those dark features she probably had a little mex in her, a little brown world mex whore all ready to show any man with the dinero some mex love, maybe taught to her early, like a lot of them, from some tio taco, and then on to the streets, on to the streets early. An old tramp story, as old as Adam and Eve, maybe older

Maybe though all women are tramps, or at least a lot of guys go for those who give that appearance and Stella was a step up, just some whore who didn’t have sense enough to cash in big on her looks and her come hither appeal. Maybe working her way up to some Hollywood producer’s concubine. June knew in her own case that if people around town had known what she had done when she went away to college, keeping a married man as a lover, keeping that married man just because he was married and no strings attached, and about what really happened when she took those three day trips every once in a while to North Beach up in Frisco town they would be calling her a tramp too, maybe worst. But she passed, passed easily for the town librarian (which she was) living with a man-scorned older sister in gentile circumstances.

And then he, Eric, blew into town, blew into town like the four winds, blew into town by happenstance, just another guy running away from the east coast after the war, maybe had done some time in battle –torn Europe, or some desolate Pacific atoll and New York, Chi town, Omaha, Denver were too small for him, he had to head to land’s end and try his luck, or fail trying. He, Eric, fresh out of dough, fresh out of luck, and fresh out of ideas, like Stella had some magic magnet wound up at Pop’s for some coffee and cakes. And there she was, any man’s girl, waiting for his line and waiting to see if he was the next best thing. Yah, she got her hooks into him, got her hooks into that smooth- talking guy good, and threw him for a loop. Got him thinking big idea thoughts again, got him all tied up. (He said later, later when it was all over and they, June and he, talked about it one night in bed, that it was probably that jasmine or cactus perfume she wore that drove him over the edge, that and that mex whore way she had about her that promised sweaty nights and cool showers afterward that got him all tangled up).

All balled up (even knowing she was seeing other guys on his dime, even knowing that guys were lined up at her door, even knowing guys were getting cramps from bending down to tie their silly shoes) Eric proposed marriage to Stella when she told him straight, straight through the heart, that was the deal or no deal (although that did not stop her later, after he had gotten his hooks in June, from taking him down the beach one night, down by secluded Seal Rock, to twist him around her finger by rocking him all night long just to make sure. June knew because she had followed then there and watched them for a while, furious).That’s when he headed to June’s door. See his big idea revolved around getting at some serious dough, and the only freed-upserious dough in town was at June’s (and her sister, Clara’s) residence. His bright idea was to con June out of her dough by fast-talking (he did that all right) her out of her virtue and then razzle-dazzlegrabbing the dough. Then he and Stella would blow town, maybe Frisco town, maybe east.

So June played along with him for a while, played the virtuous unworldly maiden ready to be swept off her feet by a fast-talking man who wanted to show her real life. One night he took her down to that same secluded Seal Rock where Stella had taken him and “seduced” her after feeding her with liquor (she would have preferred some reefer that got her hotter, more in the mood) and assumed the deal was done. Assumed he was now on easy street. She, playing ravaged virtuous maiden, insisted they get married, or else. Facing that prospect, and seeing where there might be some sense to that move in order to get some Stella money under the new circumstances, he went along with the deal. (Clara, knowing a two-bit hustler at best or just a fast-talking con man freaked out when she heard they were married but held her tongue.) That done, that marriage deed done (after a night of torrid love-making leaving him exhausted and sleepy since she had been able to score some reefer from a connection from her old school and got him to try some for the first time), they were to head to Frisco for their “honeymoon” and his dough payout.

Then the world fell in, Eric’s world. Stella was found murdered that next morning in her apartment by a neighbor who had earlier heard muffled sounds and someone, man or woman, she was not sure then, running away from Stella’s flat. She, when the police began their investigation, their all-out investigation because murder, murder most foul, in Bayside City was unheard of, claimed that someone was Eric. And so the investigation began to center on Eric, his motives and his opportunity. All the while he insisted that he did not do it, couldn’t have done it despite that witness. June insisted they flee, flee to Frisco, grab the dough she had stashed in a safety deposit box and head, head somewhere. He, shocked at Stella’s death, and then fearful when the frame came forming around his head, finally faced up to the idea that he was the fall guy for the big step-off bought her idea with both hands. They fled. To no avail though. The ex-cop, Judd, working as a special investigator, who was putting the heat on to solve the crime alerted the San Francisco police and they were there that morning at the bank to pick the pair up.

Eric was going to step off, take the big step, unless June did something, and quick before all the accumulating circumstantial evidence became a mountain (Eric’s con artist marriage to June, his being seen watching several times at Stella’s apartment late at night by some undisclosed witness, a bracelet found on the ground outside her apartment which he had given her after that night down at Seal Rock as a reward for her night’s work, and so on). And she found the perfect way to save her man, find the real killer. And she did. Just figured out who beside Eric had been inflamed by Stella. The list was a little long, including a travelling salesman who knew her when he was from hunger down in San Diego, but as it turned out the ex-cop, Judd, who had tried to frame Eric, a guy who had spent plenty of time at Pop’s drinking coffee and drinking Stella in, did it. June had traced the watch that Stella had on her wrist to him, bought at a local jewelry store when she started putting out her net. Judd had hit her too hard after he went up to her apartment to propose marriage and she laughed him out of the room. He didn’t like that, no man, no cop likes that. Case solved.

Well, almost case solved, see June knew, knew all along that Eric had not done it. He had been so reefer-stoned that first married night that he just zonked out after she took him around the world. She wasn’t sleepy thought, reefer made her stay wide awake. So after she took a shower to wash their love off, and got her street clothes on, she started walking toward the beach, toward Stella’s. She saw a man, who turned out to be Judd, fleeing that open door apartment. She went up the stairs, stepped into the apartment, and saw Stella silently stretched out on the floor, although still breathing. She impulsively grabbed a pillow and put it over Stella’s head snuffing the last bit of life out of her. Yah, June, an angel flying too close to the ground, a fallen angel.