From RKO Radio Pictures
Directed by Otto Preminger
Starring
Robert Mitchum
Jean Simmons
Mona Freeman
Herbert Marshall
Barbara O'Neil
Kenneth Tobey
Leon Ames
Jim Backus
Raymond Greenleaf
On a dark Beverly Hills night, Frank Jessup, an ambulance driver, and his partner are summoned to a wealthy cliffside mansion to treat the matriarch of the family for gas inhalation. They know the fireplace in the woman's bedroom is the focus and there is talk of a possible murder attempt.
Downstairs, as he is leaving, Frank comes across the woman's stepdaughter, Diane Tremayne, playing a melancholy piece on the piano. When she looks up at him, it's instant lust for her and he seems more interested than he should be considering he's in a relationship with a coworker. When he tells Diane that her stepmother is going to be okay, she breaks into sobs.
We think for a moment that she got a scare and is grateful for her stepmother's recovery but then we quickly realize this is film noir, this is about crime. Before too much longer we realize the 19-year old, sophisticated woman suffers from a severe Electra complex.
Diane hops in her Jaguar roadster and follows the ambulance back to the hospital and waits for Frank's shift to end. She then follows him to a roadside diner and surprises him as she takes a counter seat by his side. He's fascinated. So are we.
Frank is a big, everyday slob of a man, full of doubts, with a laissez-faire attitude and a lifetime of unrealized dreams. A sports car enthusiast himself, he tells Diane that he is saving up to open his own garage that will specialize in such vehicles. Although only knowing him for about an hour, Diane tells him she would like to invest in his proposed business. He is taken aback by the offer but Diane is skilled at reading people and knows that Frank has easy written across his forehead.
We quickly see how she operates when she insinuates herself into Frank's girlfriend's life and how she plays both her stepmother and her father, a famous novelist, whom she adores. There is little doubt that Diane is a card-carrying black widow... determined, controlling, deceitful, treacherous, beautiful, seductive and decidedly unwell.
Diane talks Frank into becoming her family's chauffeur, complete with a large apartment over the garage. She wants to have him around all the time. He is persuaded to do so because she plans to talk her family into financing his business and also because the two of them have begun a romance. It is tentative on Frank's part because he has become wary if not weary of Diane's aggressiveness.
Her determination to dispatch her equally formidable stepmother has not abated as one can tell by this clip:
Perhaps taking a page from either version of The Postman Always Rings Twice, both Diane and Frank are arrested for murder. He, of course, had nothing to do with it. Their attorney feels that if they marry they will stand a better chance of getting off. I never understood why that was a good idea and Frank is opposed to it because he no longer has any fondness for her. But marry they do after which they are both found innocent.
Frank returns to his garage apartment to pack his clothes. Diane wants to run off together and enjoy the millions both have inherited. While Frank makes it quite clear that he is going to Mexico alone and that he is filing for divorce and never wants to see her again, of course she resists.
He has called for a cab but Diane is able to talk him into allowing her to drive him to the airport. Poor sap. She has one last trick up her sleeve as the film moves into its final scenes providing an ending that left me (and many others) in a trance. People who have seen the movie could never forget this chilling ending.
Angel Face didn't acquire that title until after filming had been completed. It had been known first as Murder Story and then The Murder and the Bystander. It was based loosely on a real-life case that took place in Newport Beach, California in 1947. Howard Hughes, who bought RKO and briefly fashioned himself as a proper movie producer, acquired writer Chester Erskine's story and saw it as another film noir for the studio that loved to make them. Hughes immediately borrowed 20th Century's Fox's top director of noirs, Otto (Laura, Fallen Angel, Whirlpool, The 13th Letter, Where the Sidewalk Ends) Preminger, to steer the project.
Hughes promised to stay out of Preminger's way if the director agreed to Simmons wearing a long, black wig over her recently-sheered tresses, and agreed to an 18-day shooting schedule as required by the actress's contract termination date. Simmons cut her hair very short just to annoy Hughes who liked women having long hair. She had a troubled relationship with her boss.
She was under contract to him and never wanted to be. She worked for the Rank Organisation when she lived in England and without her consent, they sold the contract to Hughes. Like a piece of meat, the feisty actress bemoaned. She ultimately sued Hughes (and won) to get away from him. She was deathly afraid of not working as several of Hughes's contracted actresses could testify.
Hughes wanted Simmons harassed and he knew Preminger was just the local gestapo to do it. The autocratic director always had to have someone (usually a woman) to pick on during his productions and Simmons became the unlucky recipient. Director and leading lady came to dislike one another intensely.
There's long been a favorite story around Hollywood regarding one of the film's early scenes where big ol' Mitchum has to slap itty-bitty Simmons and Preminger said he didn't like how the slap was administered. He ordered Mitchum to slap her again... and again... and again. At one point the actor, fed up with it all, turned around and slapped Preminger. Is that how you want it done, Otto?
Simmons and Mitchum had just finished another film, the utterly silly She Couldn't Say No, and they had become great buddies. They would be reteamed a final time in 1961 for a much better comedy, The Grass Is Greener with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant.
It's too bad she didn't like making this film because it contains one of her best performances in a career of stellar work. I regard it as one of the finest portraits of a cunning female murderess. Perhaps Glenn Close had a look at it before starting Fatal Attraction and the same for Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.
Mitchum, a film noir icon, and also under contract to Hughes, was a perfect choice for the laconic, indifferent, at-loose-ends leading man. His performance has the look of phoning it in but it's part of the actor's brilliance.
Famed cinematographer Harry Stradling was brought over from Sam Goldwyn's independent operation to handle the required look of the black and white film noir and its lighting, shading and shadows.
Mitchum and Simmons were two of my favorite actors ever. I was besotted with both of them. And I think we know my utter fascination with film noir. And Preminger, ignoring his obvious shortcomings, was the finest director of the genre. Is there any wonder why I'd choose Angel Face as a good 50's film?
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A British actor mentioned here twice recently
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