Director: Otto Preminger
Writers: Frank Nugent & Oscar Millard (screenplay), Chester Erskine (story)
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, Mona Freeman, Herbert Marshall, Leon Ames
Genre: Film Noir
Executive Producer Howard Hughes, the famous billionaire, churned out some pretty far fetched movies in his time, with both his own production company and at R.K.O. studios including...
Angel Face with it's A-list talent: Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons and director Otto Preminger, should have been a big hit...but this B-budget Noir with it's C-story, has faded into obscurity, with one exception...
The film is noted for a big name fan, French New Wave director
Jean-Luc Godard who in 1963 named
Angel Face as his 8th best American Sound film.
What Godard seen in this troubled production I'll never know. The story plays out like a first draft of a promising premise. That premise being a young well-to-do-woman (Jean Simmons) suffers from a father fixation and despises her step mother, who she feels has stolen dad from her.
The opening scene is an apparent suicide attempt by the mother who's bedroom has the gas valve turned on and she almost asphyxiates. That's when we're introduced to the brooding leading man, (Robert Mitchum), and ambulance driver who's called to the estate.
Here's where the problems begin. Mitchum who's so perfect for Noir, doesn't fit the bill of an easily manipulative, clueless man, who so easily falls for the, all to obvious scheming by the daughter... who then plots to steal Mitchum from his girlfriend (Mona Freeman).
In one of the film's better scenes, Mona Freeman on the left is set up for a fall by scheming socialite Jean Simmons, who's after the blondes boyfriend.
Jean Simmons is decent as the proper and prim, yet unhinged woman. It's fun to see her derail the former girlfriend with a healthy dose of subterfuge. In fact I love the premise and maybe so did Godard. But there's something lacking in the nuance of the film.
Mitchum and Simmons have no chemistry, maybe because this is such a troubled production. Otto Preminger hated the original script and refused to direct the movie. Howard Hughes ends up taking Preminger on a car ride where he tells him,
"I'm going to get even with that little bitch (Jean Simmons),and you're going to help me."
Preminger was then allowed to rewrite the script and given a financial bonus to boot, but only if he could finish the film in under 18 days, by which time Jean Simmons would no longer be under contract to Howard Hughes.
Jean Simmons, knowing that Hughes preferred his leading ladies with long hair, purposely cut her hair short. Thus she wears a rather bad looking wig throughout the movie. So if all this isn't enough to poison the atmosphere on the movie set, this happens:
When Robert Mitchum got fed up with repeated re-takes in which director Otto Preminger ordered him to slap Jean Simmons across the face, he turned around and slapped Preminger, asking whether it was this way he wanted it. Preminger immediately demanded of producer Howard Hughes that Mitchum be replaced. Hughes refused.
That sounds like Robert Mitchum and good for him!...It's too bad that his character is more or less a wimpy sap, who easily gets strung along by the movies femme fatale, without any real motivation for him to fall for her.
Jean Simmons' character is neither sinfully alluring like Barbara Stanwyck in
Double Indemnity, nor is she a thing of sheer beauty and grace that men fall head over heals for like Gene Tierney in Otto Preminger's' noir
Laura.
Leon Ames proves himself not only to be a well versed character actor but a pretty darn good defense attorney too.
The one saving grace of the film is the courtroom scene, no doubt a Preminger strength. In the courtroom we see Leon Ames as the slick talking attorney...hell he just about convinced me and I had just seen the murder a few minutes earlier.
I did like his story line as the young prince.
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