Angel Face Review

In the late '40s and early '50s, Robert Mitchum was under contract to RKO-Radio Pictures, starring in a series of film noir classics like Out of the Past and Where Danger Lives. 1952's Angel Face is one of the last great noirs he did for the studio, teaming him with buxom British starlet Jean Simmons, under the imperious direction of Otto Preminger. The script, from a story by Chester Erskine, was written by Oscar Millard, Frank Nugent, and an uncredited Ben Hecht.

Mitchum plays Frank Jessup, a not-too-bright former stock car racer working as an ambulance driver. He crosses paths with troubled heiress Diane Tremayne, when he comes to her home to revive her stepmother, who has nearly asphyxiated from the gas fireplace in her bedroom. Despite the fact that he's already got a swell gal, a night nurse at the hospital, played by the lovely Mona Freeman, Mitchum falls under the spell of novice femme fatale Simmons and blows off his cute steady to go dancing with the poor little rich girl.

Before long, she's convinced him to take a job as the family chauffeur, and after unsuccessfully trying to enlist him to help her kill her stepmother, she decides to take matters into her own hands. Tragedy ensues.

The courtroom scenes pitting high-priced mouthpiece Leon Ames and stuffed shirt D.A. Jim Backus (better known as Thurston Howell III from "Gilligan's Island" and as the voice of Mr. Magoo) are a hoot and a half.

Mitchum's usual laconic presence has you rooting for him, even if he is a bit of a heel, but as was often the case in the movies he did following his brief incarceration on marijuana possession charges in 1949, his character takes it on the chin once again.

Preminger keeps things moving, and gets great performances of the leads, as well as the stellar supporting cast, particularly Ames as the unscrupulous attorney and Herbert Marshall as Simmons's ne'er-do-well father. The ending is a bit absurd, but defintiely not out of sync with the heightened reality of the film itself.

Mitchum and Simmons would re-team for 1954's She Couldn't Say No, a whimsical comedy not in the same league as this feverish film noir gem.

Available on DVD from Warner Home Video.