Fallen Angel

Otto Preminger - 1945
Another stunning picture; stripped down to its bones. We have those track ins, the movements round. Some depth staging, more generally complex compositions. The takes can be so long, virtuoso, moving around, truth to truth. There is a huge long take in a hotel room.
As before, we do not know who is after what, or why. As again, we have the switch half way through. We have, above all, the ebb, on and on, of desire. Desire for a woman who is there, who is not there. Dana Andrews' lead has a desire beyond all reason, he has decided he wants that woman, with such legs and hair, and will do anything for her. The other woman's desire is also constant, calm as ever, but constant.
Those track-ins; not melodramatic, but on an axis boring into the scene, to start it or later on; this, for me, is what desire is. See Resnais, see Preminger.
Camera height is important in Preminger's mis-en-scene. I would say default is slightly low, shoulder height. Looking up at the figures. Yet he can use high fframings. What he doesn't really have is classical eye level. I feel this adds a lot to the style.
There is such an economy of wishes here, played out against backdrops of great power; dirty night hotel (shadow), gilded cage, expressive tones of the beach. Taut, quite something.