“In a world at war many sparrows must fall.” A poignant line slightly out of keeping with the hard-boiled characters populating this atypical noir. Unusually on the money politically and psychologically, The Fallen Sparrow is a story about a volunteer fighter in the Spanish Civil War who returns to New York only to find it full of Nazi sympathisers. John Garfield’s decent American John “Kit” McKittrick has been fighting the good fight abroad and is now ready to fight it at home too, even though he’s weighed down with a hefty amount of PTSD after being tortured in Spain.
Kit never saw the Nazi who directed Franco’s torturers, he explains early on, but he did hear him approaching the cell he was locked in, dragging one leg down the corridor in a distinctive fashion. It’s a detail which, once shared, is obviously going to become relevant at some point in the not too distant future. When is Herr Dragging Leg going to turn up?
Until then Kit is investigating the strange death of Louie, the friend who got him out of Spain only to fall out of a window to his death at a society party. Accident, say the cops. Kit doesn’t buy it and sets off on a quest to discover the truth.
They are a murky gang of swells, socialites and titled (and entitled) Eurotrash emigrés. Barby Taviton (Patricia Morison) was John’s gal but dropped him when she discovered he was damaged. Now that he’s apparently better again she has him once more in her sights. The mysterious father and son Dr Christian Skaas (Walter Slezak) and Otto (Hugh Beaumont) – Danish, they say, and victims of the Nazis, but who knows. Toni Donne (Maureen O’Hara), grand-daughter of a shadowy European prince. She’s now working in a hat shop and is as suspect as she is attractive. Singer Whitney (Martha O’Driscoll), who seems decent enough, and her piano accompanist Anton (John Banner), who doesn’t.
It’s one of that lot, for sure, who heaved the innocent man out of a window and into oblivion. The plot is as thin as water but it’s enough to sustain a who’s who of the potentially guilty, a degenerate crew who justify both the America First sentiment of the pre-War years and the government’s current stance. Much is made of the fact that though Kit himself belongs to this caste, his dad was a cop who lucked into wealth late in life. New money, maybe, but a decent all-American guy beneath, got it?
Kit’s PTSD comes and goes, along with references to “the Standard”, a valuable and elusive flag acting as the film’s secondary plot driver, as if a man falling out of a window weren’t enough. The flag has both physical and conceptual weight – the object and idea people are willing to die for – and it’s both redundant and heavy-handed. Which is odd in a film that for the most part is taut, tough and light on its feet.
Nicholas Musuraca, master of noir lighting, makes sure it’s all murky shadows with occasional pools of light, reflecting the state of Kit’s mind. And another real plus is the casting. O’Hara is immaculately coiffed and tailored; Garfield is more informal and democratic. Together they generate no frisson whatsoever, which is a problem considering there’s a romantic subplot with their names on it. But the rest of the actors compensate, all of them behaving as if they were the exotics in an Agatha Christie story.
Presenting a threat to the nation as a threat to an individual’s psyche is a neat touch and makes for punchy propaganda. Director Richard Wallace does well to keep the show on the road, especially with all the flappiness in the plotting, and eventually whips things together for a fabulously dramatic ending, when lighting, music and wild overacting combine. Pure evil versus damaged virtue is the offer. We’ll have what’s Kit’s having is the obvious response.
The Fallen Sparrow – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
