(Flash Review)The protagonist, Eric, should enter politics as he can sweet talk anyone, make falsehoods quickly believable and be so persuasive and persistent that people go along with his desires. By chance Eric ends up in a small town and is short on money....an honesty. While attempting to pursue an attractive waitress, he concocts a plan to acquire a large financial sum and escape town with her and start a new chapter in his life. Eric later finds himself trying to tap dance out of his scheme as new wrenches are thrown into the mix. How many lies will he tell and how many people will he mislead? Will his ultimate scheme workout or will he be lucky to get out of town? This was a quality Film Noir that clipped along at a nice rate with a clever screen play and quality acting. Entertaining to see how the story plays out with amusing period dialog.

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.

A seedy environment, reckless actions and the infatuation of a femme fatale. These elements of film noir are essential in Fallen Angel in portraying a secretly yet deeply morally corrupt society by following the journey of the protagonist.Drifter Eric Stanton finds himself in the town of Walton, a place whose exterior seems wholesome but a number of the residents are the opposite conversing in cafes, dance halls and quiet spots. Most notably local waitress Stella who oozes sexuality just by being in a room evident in her opening scene. As with most male protagonist in film noirs Eric immediacy becomes fixated on the emotionally lethal Stella to the point of becoming involved with a less tainted woman in order to steal money, all as a result of Eric's blind passion for Stella. Delving deeper into their relationship Eric and Stella have common ground; both are searching for their vision of a perfect lifestyle and won't let morals get in the way. It becomes somewhat appealing to see these fragile figures together mixing in their immorality. Yet the visions they both share soon leads them to dark ends.Fallen Angel's plot reaches its core with the murder of Stella evokes dangers for Eric. Whilst the situation turns nasty, Eric runs to safety with June, the less tainted woman he married solely for her money. However this relationship which had been built upon deception turns two dimensional. It offers a great dynamic to Fallen Angel as Eric finally finds the permanency he had been drifting years for in June, whose kind and loving personality leads Eric to a more pure existence. Kudos has to be given to Alice Faye, who makes her performance as June one of heartfelt sentiment that we cheer for her to sway Eric to moral goodness.And with good reason as the climax reveals a senior figure in Walton as the murderer not only gave a pessimistic view of amorality in society but also mirrored how Eric's life could have been if his infatuation with Stella had gotten to more extreme heights. This reflective realisation and the whole dynamic of Eric drifting between the worlds of evil and good make Fallen Angel a provocative character piece.

Two things usually call out to me upon watching a film, and especially a film noir. Most important is structure, resonances between the world of the film and anchors where feel and authorship of that world is decided inside the film. Just below this but closely attached is the personality of the camera, how experience of this world colors our eyes and are we perhaps among the authors by seeing story a certain way.I say especially in a film noir, because noir in my view is not about dames or bepop murder, not as a first principle at least. It's about a story that is both story, and reflections cast by the anxious mind. (anxious because of life in the big city and all that)So far as structure is concerned, this is a mess. A conman falls for a sultry waitress, but in order to earn her he has to enact a charade around a second woman and her sister, rich but sheltered. Karmas at work; the charade is presaged early on by a spiritist show rolling into town and our man getting to work selling tickets for them to gullible folks. The staged hokus pokus directly addresses the two sisters and losing money by falling for the wrong guy, but of course only because this has already happened in the past and the magician has done his research.There are changes of heart that you'll just have to swallow, but that's not the problem. There is no commitment to one or multiple dreamers of the story as in Laura, this is, much less the fluid streams of identity and self that are so characteristic of noir at its best. It takes its romance and drama at a lot of face value. It is very much a doomed love story, about this man who discovers only too late that the wrong woman was really right for him. So as noir, this isn't much—it's no Shanghai, Detour or Deadline at Dawn.No, this is really worth it for the camera and mood of the sleepy West Coast town, a lot of latenight snooping around in shadows, promise of sex in the salty air. This is where connections to Vertigo pay off. There is a marvelous shot where the transition from neon night into early morning is reflected on a glass panel, but this is just it. It is color without personality in the story.