Un si doux visage

"Angel Face", according to one film journal, has become a cult film with a strong repeat-viewer base ... a bit like the children at a scary movie who cover their eyes but continue to peek through fingers just the same. I'm an "AF" fan, too. One of the film's most powerful aspects is the utterly chilling soundtrack score with its turbulent minor-key piano. To my mind, Dimitri Tiomkin never composed a more appropriate theme than this. And during the lonely nighttime scene when Jean Simmons' character revisits the windswept driveway where her parents had met their horrific death, when the wordless chorus swells into Tiomkin's theme, see if you don't agree that this is one of cinema's most memorable moments. Highly recommended to all except young children and sensitive adults for its surprising and shocking imagery.

This very poetic film is really, in essence, a study of two characters: 'Robert Mitchum' and 'Jean Simmons.' It's very style affords them ample opportunities for revealing aspects of their fascinatingly complex personalities that would have never been unveiled in more standard Hollywood fare. Although it doesn't have the ingenious plot of 'Laura,' as soon as you look beyond plot, you realize how much more poetic and ultimately satisfying it is. For some reason, 'Angel Face' isn't out on video, but Turner Classic Movies plays it every other month; so catch it there and make sure you have your VCR running.

The film starts with a call for an ambulance. A woman at a large estate has almost been asphyxiated by the gas heater in her room. The key has been removed from the radiator, so it seems deliberate. Did somebody try to kill her or did she try to kill herself or was it just some kind of odd freak accident?

While the commotion is going on upstairs, ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) wanders downstairs and finds the stepdaughter ( her dad is married to the wealthy woman), Diane (Jean Simmons) playing the piano. And that's where the attraction begins on the part of Frank. It's where the obsession begins on the part of Diane. It's where Diane mutters her first double entendre. She asks how her stepmother is, and says "It's so hard, just waiting...". Waiting for her to live, or for her to die?

The film is ultimately a wicked study in obsession - the kind of obsession that has no boundaries - the kind of obsession between a man and a woman - the kind of obsession that is so self-serving. And, interestingly, it is largely one-sided - since Frank may enjoy the delights of Diane, but also knows deep down that she should be put back on the shelf. Diane's obsession is so real that you do basically know that Mitchum's Frank Jessup doesn't really stand a chance.

But Frank wasn't just wandering through life alone when Diane met him. The other woman in Frank's life, played by Mona Freeman, is blonde and desirable. She may be an excellent cook and not ask questions, as Frank says, but there is some stark language for the production code era. He mentions she sleeps in pajamas. He mentions how much she weighs - "stripped". The implication is that Frank may be the free agent that he claims to be, but he has been sleeping with the lady. But she's a lady with a level head, and she is not just going to wait around for Frank to come to his senses - or not. Instead she explores another more dependable romantic possibility.

Let me just say Jean Simmons was a revelation here. She's a good actress but she has always come across as a virginal school marm type in all of the roles I saw her in until this one. I would have never believed she could have played opposite Mitchum's cool, relaxed persona and have made it work, but she did.

This film is dark to the extreme and is as fresh, as vital, and as pertinent as though it were made just yesterday.

Angel Face was a recommended film according to several noir chronicles, so I figured when it rolled around on TMC I could tape it and erase if it failed to satisfy. Despite initial difficulty getting involved in the plot, before I knew it I was absorbed by Jean Simmon's keynote performance. The myriad small moments of suspense along the way in no way prepare the viewer for the shocking moment which closed this cautionary tale. Definitely recommended viewing.

Angel Face (1952)

An extraordinary film in many ways, including simply avoiding clichés. It starts with a slap, and ends with a real shock. Between it beguiles, it plays with your sympathies, it seems to toy with an obvious turn of events then subverts it.

Robert Mitchum is the obvious centerpiece for most viewers, and if you know him you know he's consistent in all his roles, including in this one where he plays a mechanic doing odd jobs. More impressive, for me, is the femme fatale, the leading woman, Jean Simmons, who not only has an angel face, but an expressive one, moving from lively and untarnished to devious, pained, or stubborn. The two of them do not have the on screen chemistry of some of the great romances in film--blame Mitchum, maybe, for his coolness, attractive as it is to the viewer, or blame the director, Otto Preminger.

Preminger, for all his genius and willingness to flaunt the censors, is a director's director, a little like Welles without the burden of virtuosity. His best films ("Man with the Golden Arm" and "Laura" and possibly "Anatomy of a Murder") present a romantic situation as if it is a given. It doesn't really develop into something steamy or passionate or emotionally necessary. That is, he's no Nicholas Ray in this sense. And so in "Angel Face" there is a romantic involvement that is believable but never quite compelling.

And usually this is perfect, because Mitchum and Simmons in their parts are wary of each other, or are not quite involved for the sake of love. Or for love alone. That's partly why the movie works, as a movie, in a slightly different way than we expect from this kind of romance. And it's not just a romance, of course, with the hint of murder in the fringes. And then a real murder, with a huge and awful twist.

There's no question this is a beautiful movie, and a compact one, moving through several phases of the plot with fluidity. The secondary actors are good, mainly the inimitable Herbert Marshall as the father. And the writing is particularly good, I think. This is a special movie the way Jacques Tourneur's "Out of the Past," which also stars Mitchum. It's has film noir strains, but it is something else completely, too. Special stuff.