Popular reviews

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 2

  really love noirs about desperate schemers forced to use nothing but their looks and wit to see how far they can take $1, and this is a pretty damn good one with really smooth and effective long-take camerawork from preminger, solid performances across the board and a palpable atmosphere of loneliness as its characters are grasping for anything/anyone. (linda darnell 👀.) takes enough strange detours in the details of the plot (including intriguingly switching which romance you think is the central one about halfway through) that i was fairly engrossed front-to-back, and though the wrap-up is a bit tidy i appreciated that it didn't let the protagonist's sweaty, impulsive frustration (which drives the majority of the film) entirely off the hook.

  [35mm]

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  Review by sakana1 ★★★★ 16

  General spoilers ahead. 

  Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) is my favorite kind of noir character: the horny, dirtbag grifter who plays at having everything under control while the universe has a good laugh at his naïveté. (See also: Neff, Walter.)

  For Stanton, being on the make is the same as breathing: they both happen without conscious thought, and he can't survive without either one. Not only does grifting enable him to eat, but it also gives him the confidence he needs to keep going. When he's talking, he's in charge, laying small traps for the people around him, then watching proudly as they walk contentedly right into them. The marks are none the wiser, but Stanton is more sure of himself…

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  Review by Jesse Snoddon ★★★

  "If this is what all your little things add up to I don't think it's very much."

  Drifter Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) gets thrown off a bus in a small town and falls for Stella (Linda Darnell), a waitress who dreams of escape to a bigger and brighter future. To scrape up the dough he needs split with Stella, Eric begins dating June (Alice Faye) in a bid to get his hands on her money. As always in the genre, things do not go according to plan.

  I often find Dana Andrews a little flat in his roles as a cop, but he's solid here and a lot more animated and interesting as a smooth talking slime ball. Watching him…

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  Review by Channing Pomeroy ★★★½

  This is a noir classic set-up oozing bad luck, bad intentions, and bad choices. Dana Andrews, the avatar of wasted talents, is a grifter down on his luck and ridin’ the 'Hound. He rolls into town and falls for a Stella, the star waitress at Pop’s. He vows to swindle the town heiress and run off with the hot waitress. Then our expectations are violently overturned.

  There’s an obtuse love triangle, misbegotten schemes, a murder, lovers on the run, a rogue cop, and some serious Frank Borzagean redemptive-power-of-love.

  I loved the bus ride and roadsigns opening credits, which deserves to be stolen. John Caradine gives a deliciously fraudulent cameo, and how great would it be to hang out drinking 5-cent…

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  Review by Raphael Georg Klopper ★★★★ 4

  Otto Preminger clearly didn’t want to make a repeat of Laura, even after the arousing success of it, and even teaming up again with Dana Andrews at the lead role in telling yet another percisive murder mystery. But if the latter film was a Noir about finding meaning in the afterlife, seeing a new chance of re-start through the inexplicable chain of love, Fallen Angel fits in the more traditional elements to break into something that attempts to go even deeper.

  Setting off from a pretty old-school Noir territory, with all the recognizable tropes of one: ranging from the hard as boiled dialogue that don’t ever cease of drip in almost lyrical texture; the wrongly accused protagonist on the run;…

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  Review by Gentry ★★★ 5

  “I got everything by talking fast in a world that goes for talking. And ending up with exactly nothing.”

  This one’s called “Stella works in a diner and she was always down.”

  Stuck in Walton, California. Somewhere between San Francisco and LA, a few hundred miles from either one. Dana Andrews, empty wallet, cons his way into a con: spook promoter (everyone likes how he talks). Along the way he meets the classic definition of a “dame,” smokey eyed Stella (Linda Darnell), working at a “one-arm joint,” someone who Eric (Andrews) thinks is an easy lay. Not so much.

  The film delivers obvious tropes that I expected it to invert, but it never does. Like plain-jane church organist June Mills…

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  Review by Anthony Niduaza ★★★

  Linda Darnell is so fucking saucy in all her scenes that the movie withers once she’s taken out of the picture. And Eric is such an epic asshole that I was rooting for him to get his comeuppance - doesn’t happen. Not to belabor Dana Andrews, whose performance is good, but his character is a piece of shit to every woman in the flick and is the catalyst for much of the drama. He’s the villain but get’s a heroes’ ending, freedom intact and a wealthy woman by his side. Speaking of which, I feel sorry for Alice Fay, who has to be playing one of the meekest women of all the ‘good girls’ in noir. It’s a thankless role…

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  Review by Stephen ★★★

  This a pretty standard noir story, directed with flourish by Otto Preminger. The setup is nothing new, lone drifter arrives in small American town and falls for femme fatale local waitress but needs to raise cash to woo her, so turns to a local heiress whom he plans to seduce, marry and divorce, stealing her savings along the way. Sounds simplicity itself, but things soon get out of hand and the film takes a few interesting turns as the drifter, played by Dana Andrews, tries to keep out of trouble.

  To be honest, the plot is a tad unrealistic – whilst Linda Darnell and Alice Fay gamely deliver as the competing love interests the story makes no real sense as…

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  Review by Diogo Serafim ★★★★★

  At first, he finds a city full of easy preys, all pawns on a stage for him to take advantage of, all but one girl, who doesn't fall for his aggressive, confident means, so he finds another easier prey as a trampoline for him to get where he actually wants. He treats her like she treated him, but you can only enter heaven as two, sometimes all you need is someone to trust you, even if you don't deserve it, perhaps especially if you don't deserve it, so you can start loving yourself through her eyes. A leap of faith, a film that made me feel hopeful that perhaps there will be a way out someday, even if her face…

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★★

  preminger's direction refuses to privilege any of his characters over the others, we're never allowed access to their individual perspectives, but rather see them always juxtaposed together in long-winded two-shots that push in and out of their dialogue in accordance with how harmonious or discordant they are. yet everyone is allowed their reasons; no one, even his grifters, are deluding themselves into being what they are not. it's a series of men and women convincing themselves of their essential sameness and differences; a noir of compromise, not passion.

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  Review by Christopher Moore ★★★★ 4

  Even though Fallen Angel is a frequently mesmerizing film, I do have some misgivings about it - mainly that the uneven pacing and Linda Darnell's absence halfway through bummed me out. Sultry and magnetic, Darnell had me eating out of the palm of her hand. She's amazing here. Dana Andrews's troubled hustler is emblematic of the film's grittiness, aided by the evocative California seaside setting. While Fallen Angel falls short of greatness for me, I prefer its sleaziness to the sophistication of Laura. Though it’s hard not to get the sleaze on when you've got Bruce Cabot, sleaziness incarnate. Charles Bickford beating the hell out of him just 'cause his face annoyed him was a mood.

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  Review by Jordan James Brooks 🤠 ★★★★

  “Don’t smile - your face looks better without it.”

  Do people still participate in Noirvember? I used to spend the whole month each year binging old favorites, discovering new ones, along with rooting out the odd rare-curio; but in recent years I just never took the time to join in. I spend a lot of my time watching them anyway as it’s a favorite genre of mine, so it just never felt like a special “occasion” or “challenge”. Anyway, here’s an old favorite. This little known Otto Preminger noir first introduced me to the great Dana Andrews, a true veteran of the genre who always revered the archetypal detective or the “wronged man”. Here, he plays the latter in a…