Fallen Angel, the follow-up to Otto Preminger's big success, Laura, continues the theme of moral ambiguity. Dana Andrews is the anti-hero conman who gets caught in two overlapping triangles and ends up as the prerequisite murder suspect, hunted down by the cop with a few secrets of his own.

The always ambiguous Linda Darnell is the focal point of both triangles, exploiting her sexuality for everything she can as she is caressed, as Laura was, by an ever-present romantic melody, "Slowly I Open My Eyes". The song is played repeatedly, and ritualistically, on the jukebox in the diner where she works, flanked on either side of the cash register by the two men in her life, facing off like mirror images. Andrew Horn