Fallen Angel (1945)
My journey through the BFI films continued with this Otto Preminger's highly underrated film-noir classic. The movie is made flawless, it's just stunningly brilliant in every aspect. Sure it might not bring much new to the genre, but any other word than a masterpiece would be underrating to it. It's a story about a washout press agent Eric Stanton (Dana Andrews) who has his eye on a sultry waitress Stella (Linda Darnell). He comes up with a plan to get some easy money from a wealthy heiress June (Alice Faye) so he can please Stella to marry him. Needless to say things don't go as planned. The cast is stellar, with Linda Darnell taking the "femme fatale" role to a different level and Alice Faye making a really strong performance as the victim of the plot who turns out to be more than meets the eye. Even thou the movie focuses on Eric Stanton, the women really steal the show with their superb performances, which was a nice change. The movie looks stunning and it's crafted with such intelligence, control and style that it's quite close to perfection. Can't understand why this movie is left with so little notice as it's superior to most of the better known film-noirs. I would put it right up to the top of the genre with M, Touch of Evil, The Third Man, Sunset Blvd. and so on.
97%
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