With these characters Dana Andrews seldom goes wrong; and here in 'Fallen Angel' his performance is very creditable: never an actor with a wide range of performance what he did do well he did very well.
Here his character suits him: a rascal and a chancer, a low beat and a drop out, but smart, aware, angry, resourceful and determined; teamed with a fellow cast of equally, if different, anglers and no-good characters.
Nice flashes of physical brutality with a charged hint of that exact kind of male "driving" that can cause trouble for unwary women and competing men at each of the rare occurrences of outright violence.
The direction, scene setups and cinematography often raise this film even higher in quality. Lovely flowing camera positions follow, react to and even anticipate onscreen moves. Long takes are used effectively whenever 'Fallen Angel' gets really dark and close between it's trapped characters.
Sex and lust bubble between Dana and both his fiances nicely and there's never a doubt in my mind that every character has either got a sex life, had a sex life, or at least has a sex drive! They don't just want to fall in love. Or pretend to. There's direct human sexual motivation at play.
The murder victim and the police investigation and the eventual culprit are all nicely handled although a few times 'Fallen Angel' does require either extra patience or suspension of disbelief from the viewer due either to clunky plot devices or a slightly un-captivating narrative force deriving from the writer and director. A little more narrative vibrancy, more cinematic treatment, more film noir sensibility would have helped me to let the film lead me where it would.
My final score is a 7/10 but I've really rounded up a high 6 a little, mainly because the fluid handling of the camera, scene set ups and flashes of expressive cinematography do completment a cast suited to their roles and produce a film that as a whole is memorable and interesting if not quite successful as a dramatic story. Pragmatically this would rate a 6 for me but I choose to turn half a blind eye to its more conventional failings and emphasis it's stylistic and tonal value.
