Visiting Film Noir: Fallen Angel

1945 Film Noir

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Otto Preminger

Starring

Alice Faye

Dana Andrews

Linda Darnell

Charles Bickford

Anne Revere

Percy Kilbride

Bruce Cabot

John Carradine

Dorothy Adams

When a film noir is also a guilty pleasure, I almost have a hard time knowing what to brand it in the titles here but I usually opt for noir because I want to sell noir to readers, loving it as I do.  This noir certainly does have merit.  It has the standard black and white noir lighting... the shadows and the light v.s. dark lighting to help illuminate a character or circumstance... it has the moodiness, the murky characters, the smartass dialogue, the bad girl, questionable police procedures, etc.  Its selling features are its cast and some terrific acting and a few scenes that sparkle with that acting and  effective writing.

Another film noir trait is that everything doesn't always make sense or come together (The Big Sleep is king with this trait).  That's just noir.  And on this point those who defend this film usually bring up this issue when the truth is the story is just a bit of a mess... so often incongruous, nonsensical and implausible.

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.  Alice Faye was 20th Century Fox's musical star from the mid 30s until the early 40s.  She made much money for the studio and of course, like all good movie studios, Fox knew her talents and wasn't much interested in her making films that weren't musicals.  The lady, however, had other ideas.  She felt she was being mistreated.  She didn't mind Betty Grable bumping her off the throne (she and Betty actually got along well) but like most musical stars, she knew she'd better have something else to offer because those sweet musical roles were gonna dry up.

She wanted to move into dramatic roles but studio head Darryl Zanuck wasn't listening.  So Faye unofficially retired despite having a few years to go on her contract.  Fox sent her dozens of scripts, all of which she declined because they offered nothing new.  She also hadn't gotten along with Zanuck.  She didn't like his autocratic ways, his vulgarity, his familiarity with some of his female employees and his lack of respect for her opinions on her own career.  She was sure he was trying to sabotage it.

Then one day in 1944 she saw the superb Laura, one of the great noirs, and thought... boy, that's the type of film I would like to make.  It wasn't long before the script for Fallen Angel was in her mailbox and she thought that it was a noir in the tradition of Laura and exactly the type of story she was looking for.  She told Zanuck that if he could get Fox contract player, Dana Andrews, the male star of Laura, as her leading man, she'd make her first movie in two years.

Andrews hated everything about Fallen Angel from the moment he saw the script until his dying day.  He had never been so popular at the box office (thanks to Laura) and felt this new film would change all that.  When Otto Preminger came aboard as director (he had directed Laura and would hire much of the crew from that film to work on the new one) and even knowing how the two men enjoyed working together, Andrews still said no.

Zanuck, who always considered Andrews one of his favorite male employees and one of his most cooperative, was adamant.  Andrews would make this film or he would go on a lengthy suspension.  Zanuck told the actor Faye wanted him for the role and Zanuck wanted her for the role and that was that.  Andrews began the project with serious misgivings.

Few things are more fun in a noir for me than a good girl and a bad girl.  Faye may have wanted to go dramatic but she wasn't ready to play a slut while Linda Darnell was always up for it.  She was Fox's resident tramp... on the screen I mean.  Or do I?

Fallen Angel is not much like Laura at all other than, of course, a number of the same people are involved and both are film noirs.  Angel takes place in a little one-horse town full of anguished people and depressing situations while Laura inhabits the glamor of Manhattan and concerns the rich, let's-do-lunch crowd.  Angel is about three stories, none of which, unfortunately comes into sharp focus.  Laura's story is sharp as a tack.  For half of the story Andrews the cop works at solving Laura's murder.  When we find out that someone else was murdered instead, and by accident, the second half focuses on the killer trying again.  For his entire career Preminger dealt with the comparisons between these two films and he was irked that Angel could never quite measure up.

We won't spend a great deal of time on the story itself.  There are two reasons for this decision.  One is that it's the type of whodunit that would make discussing it just one big spoiler alert.  Secondly, because so much is wrong with the film, it makes discussing the finer points of the story a frustrating experience... for you and me.

Andrews, who has the largest role, plays a fast-talking, glib drifter-con man who gets dumped in the fictional central California town of Walton when the bus driver throws him off because it's as far as his fare will take him and he has only one dollar to his name.  He becomes involved in some fortune tellers which brings him money and increases his shame.  He also becomes involved with two women, one a sultry waitress (Darnell) and the other a well-to-do spinster (Faye).

He falls crazy in love/lust with the waitress, a beautiful but embittered, hard-luck dame who knows she opportunistic but desperately wants to be married and have a normal life.  (Ha, that would last through the first diaper change.)  She tells him to get some money and a wedding ring and they'll talk.  So being the creep that he is, he begins romancing an initially reluctant Faye with the intention of taking all her money.

After Faye comes around some, he decides he will marry her and then get her money, divorce her and marry Darnell.  He does marry her but Darnell is murdered (off screen) and Andrews, who has fled to San Francisco with Faye, becomes one of the suspects.

Before the story gets into the noirish aspects of discovering her murderer, there is a shift to the adjustments Andrews and Faye must accomplish to make a go of their marriage.  It is the least interesting part of the film and takes up a bit of time.  We don't get back to the murder until the pair returns to town and I will admit I enjoyed the ending very much.

While Andrews has the most screen time, what excitement the movie generates comes from the showy Darnell.  When she dies, the film dies (until the last 10 minutes) with her.  Unfortunately, there is still a third to go.  

In a hotel room they are sharing in San Francisco, Faye asks Andrews about his past and he responds don't waste your time trying to figure it out.  Oh, how rich that is.  It just about sums up the final third of the film for me.  

I spent so much time saying out loud to myself... huh?  Faye was a church-going, shy woman with apparently no life experiences in the romance department who lacks confidence and knows what she does from the many books she reads.  She is under the thumb of her older sister (Revere) who was fleeced by a man she married.  The notion that this younger sister would travel down the same path is simply preposterous.  

When he tells her the ugly truth of why he married her, why didn't that seem to matter to her?  Why didn't she think he was the killer?  Why did she put such trust in him?  She hardly knew him for God's sake.  She now talks with such assurance.  Where did this come from?  She was so lacking in confidence before and now she's brimming over with it?  I practically turned the damn thing off when she tells him she needs him.  Yeah?  For what?

Where is verisimilitude when one needs it?  There is such an astonishing lack of credibility, mostly from Faye's character and the preposterous lines she's given to say.

Andrews could have phoned this part in... he's that good.  In Laura and many other films in the past and more in the future, few pulled off the glib charm and weary demeanor that he did.  He always seemed unsettled and wrestling with demons we may never know about.  He was glorious in noirs which is why Fox put him in so many.  This is the second of five movies the actor and director would make together.  

Darnell is the epitome of a noir femme fatale... gorgeous, bitter, determined, sassy, road-tested.  When she enters the dismal, little cafe in her first appearance, one cannot help but be dazzled by her.  But hey, a picture is worth a thousand words, yes?

It was hard to believe how far she'd come.  She started at Fox when she was 15 or so but her mature appearance put her in adult parts.  She spent a few years in virginal roles (often in Tyrone Power movies) and then POW, did she know how to turn it on!  Oddly enough, in a film about which I have much criticism, it contains one of my favorite Darnell performances.  Her scenes with Andrews are rife with sexual tension.  Preminger saw to that.

The director, as has been mentioned in prior postings, needed someone to pick on when he made his movies. The supreme bully usually targeted his actresses.  Here it was Darnell.  While she said she hated him with a fire she'd not previously known, she would work for him three more times.  She always captivated me and I rarely missed her movies.  She may not have ever become a top  actress but the allure she had was, as I see it, undeniable.  I know why she would never have made it on radio.

Despite my misgivings about the development of Faye's character and the ridiculous things she's given to say, she should have been proud of her performance in the only dramatic part she ever had.  But she was not.

From left: Andrews, Faye, Bickford, Revere

Faye attended a screening on the Fox lot of the completed film.  She sat quietly throughout and when it was over, she said she could never remember being so angry.  She claimed her part made no sense (aha!) because some 10 scenes, mostly in the first part of the story, were cut out and that they were not only her best scenes but provided the motivation for some of the things she said and did in the latter third.

She claims that Darnell's part was built up far more than what was originally envisioned and obviously at the sacrifice of her own role.  She said that Zanuck did this deliberately and punitively.  But why?  Sure they didn't get along but why not be more forthcoming and respectful instead of this cheap shot?

While she had nothing personally against Darnell, Faye knew, like most Fox employees did, that Zanuck set aside the three o'clock hour every day for some canoodling with one of his more attractive and buxom employees and that person was often Darnell.  

She wrote a note to her boss, so profane apparently that she vowed she would never disclose what was said, handed it to the guard at the gate and kissed her movie career goodbye.  Because she walked out on her contract, she was not permitted to work at any other studios until the contract expired.  As it turned out, she would not work again for far longer.  In 1962, she returned to Fox (Zanuck was no longer in charge of the day-to-day operations) to play the mother in the third version of the musical State Fair.

As I've said, the acting is the best thing about the film.  Anne Revere is as stoic and a little less harsh than usual as Faye's older sister.  Her usual brittle character was a good fit here.  Charles Bickford is a former New York cop who did something wrong and was virtually run out of town.  Walton's chief of police puts him in charge of the murder investigation because he knew all of the principal players.  Percy Kilbride has a good role as the lovesick proprietor of the dingy diner who seemingly breaks down after the murder.  Bruce Cabot plays another Darnell suitor most effectively.

Composer David Raksin, another member of the Laura team, famously composed that film's haunting theme and wrote a song for Fallen Angel as well.  Slowly became another burr under Faye's saddle because she sang it in the film and it was also cut.  To add insult to injury, it was recorded by Dick Haymes and sung in the film several times from the cafe's jukebox.

A noirish pic if there ever was one

I had wondered for years about this title.  What did it mean exactly?  Who was it meant for?  It's not plural so it must refer to one of the main trio.  I assumed it was meant for one of the two women.  Faye, however, quotes a poem... we are born to tread the earth as angels... to seek out heaven this side of the sky... But they who race alone shall stumble in the dark and fall from grace... Then love alone can make the fallen angel rise... For only two together can enter paradise.  So he is the fallen angel and she's come to redeem him?  I am still left with why would she want to.  And because she does, I find her less a heroine than I would have liked.  But again... poor writing or editing or some damned thing.

I would like to see this remade as two movies.  The Darnell segment has a lot more dramatic flair as an attraction and the Faye segment would supply a story of great pathos.  I'm jus' sayin'.

Here is a 4-minute couple of scenes with Darnell and Andrews:

Next posting:

The character actor who was a star