Angel Face (1952)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

Otto Preminger

Writers:

Frank S. Nugent (screenplay) and
Oscar Millard (screenplay) ...
(more)

Release Date:

11 December 1952 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Crime

Tagline:

She loved one man ... enough to KILL to get him!

Plot:

Ambulance driver Frank Jessup is ensnared in the schemes of the sensuous but dangerous Diane Tremayne.

Plot Keywords:

Ambulance | Chauffeur | Melodrama | Jealousy | Piano

Cast

Robert Mitchum	...	Frank Jessup
Jean Simmons	...	Diane Tremayne Jessup
Mona Freeman	...	Mary Wilton
Herbert Marshall	...	Mr. Charles Tremayne
Leon Ames	...	Fred Barrett
Barbara O'Neil	...	Mrs. Catherine Tremayne
Kenneth Tobey	...	Bill Crompton
Raymond Greenleaf	...	Arthur Vance
Griff Barnett	...	The Judge
Robert Gist	...	Miller
Morgan Farley	...	Juror
Jim Backus	...	Dist. Atty. Judson
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Grandon Rhodes	...	Prison chaplain (scenes deleted)
Charles Tannen	...	TV broadcaster (scenes deleted)
Ralph Volkie	...	Good Humor man (scenes deleted)
Peggy Walker	...	TV girl (scenes deleted)
Gertrude Astor	...	Matron (uncredited)
Lucille Barkley	...	Waitress (uncredited)
Larry J. Blake	...	Det. Brady (uncredited)
Morgan Brown	...	Harry (proprietor of diner (uncredited)
Mary Jane Carey	...	Woman (uncredited)
Jack Chefe	...	Man (uncredited)
Clark Curtiss	...	Reporter (uncredited)
Roy Darmour	...	Assistant District Attorney (uncredited)
Jack Ellis	...	Jury foreman (uncredited)
Bess Flowers	...	Shirley (Barrett's secretary) (uncredited)
Alex Gerry	...	Frank's attorney (uncredited)
Robert Haines	...	Court reporter (uncredited)
Charmienne Harker	...	Miss Preston (secretary) (uncredited)
Theresa Harris	...	Nurse Theresa (uncredited)
Jim Hope	...	Detective (uncredited)
Marvin Jones	...	Policeman (uncredited)
Pete Kellett	...	Detective (uncredited)
Frank Kumagai	...	Ito (Tremayne butler) (uncredited)
Mike Lally	...	Reporter (uncredited)
Herbert Lytton	...	Doctor (uncredited)
Lewis Martin	...	Police sergeant (uncredited)
Mary Lee Martin	...	Patient (uncredited)
Frank O'Connor	...	Bailiff (uncredited)
Bob Peoples	...	Reporter (uncredited)
Charlotte Portney	...	Patient (uncredited)
Jeffrey Sayre	...	Court clerk (uncredited)
Sammy Shack	...	Man (uncredited)
Cora Shannon	...	Patient (uncredited)
George Sherwood	...	Man (uncredited)
Carl Sklover	...	Man (uncredited)
Brick Sullivan	...	Deputy Sheriff Kelly (uncredited)
Max Takasugi	...	Chiyo (Tremayne maid) (uncredited)
Doreen Tryden	...	Patent (uncredited)
Buck Young	...	Assistant District Attorney (uncredited)

Directed by
Otto Preminger

Writing credits
Frank S. Nugent		(screenplay) (as Frank Nugent) and
Oscar Millard		(screenplay)
Chester Erskine		(story)
Ben Hecht		uncredited

Produced by
Otto Preminger	....	producer

Original Music by
Dimitri Tiomkin

Cinematography by
Harry Stradling Sr.		(director of photography) (as Harry Stradling)

Film Editing by
Frederic Knudtson

Art Direction by
Carroll Clark
Albert S. D'Agostino

Set Decoration by
Jack Mills
Darrell Silvera

Costume Design by
Michael Woulfe

Makeup Department
Mel Berns	....	makeup artist
Larry Germain	....	hair stylist

Production Management
Edward Killy	....	unit manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Fred Fleck	....	assistant director (as Fred A. Fleck)

Sound Department
Clem Portman	....	sound
Earl A. Wolcott	....	sound (as Earl Wolcott)

Music Department
C. Bakaleinikoff	....	music coordinator
Dimitri Tiomkin	....	conductor
Gene Rose	....	composer: stock music (uncredited)
Leith Stevens	....	composer: stock music (uncredited)
Roy Webb	....	composer: stock music (uncredited)

Other crew
Howard Hughes	....	presenter

Production Companies

• RKO Radio Pictures

Distributors

• RKO Radio Pictures (1952) (USA) (theatrical)
• C&C Television Corporation (1955) (USA) (TV)
• Warner Home Video (2007) (USA) (DVD)

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Norway:16 | Finland:K-16 | USA:Approved (PCA #15993) | Sweden:15 | Australia:PG

Filming Locations:

Beverly Hills Fire Department, Beverly Hills, California, USA

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

When Robert Mitchum got fed up with repeated re-takes in which the director Otto Preminger ordered him to slap Jean Simmons across the face, he turned around and slap Preminger, asking whether it was this way he wanted it. Preminger immediately demanded of Howard Hughes for Mitchum to be replaced. Hughes refused.

Goofs:

Boom mic visible: (00:02:56) The shadow of the microphone at the top of the headboard is visible, right after Mrs. Tremayne says "Someone tried to murder me." Then the microphone (shadow) turns to the left towards another actor.

Quotes:

Frank Jessup: [to Mary] You know something? You're a pretty nice guy - for a girl.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Sweesters: Virtual Room: Cara d'àngel (#1.17)" (2009)

Soundtrack:

I Couldn't Sleep a Wink Last Night

In Jean Simmons, Robert Mitchum meets a dangerously demented femme fatale

In Otto Preminger's Angel Face, Robert Mitchum lays out his credo: `Never be the innocent bystander. That's the guy who always gets hurt.' He's being disingenuous; he's not quite so innocent as he pretends – but he still ends up getting hurt.

An emergency medical technician, Mitchum responds to a call at a mansion high up a hill. There a wealthy woman (Barbara O'Neil) has almost asphyxiated from the gas in her unlit bedroom fireplace. Was it a suicide bid, or something more sinister? Her husband (Herbert Marshall), a burnt-out novelist she supports, can't explain it. Neither can his daughter by a previous marriage (Jean Simmons).

Mitchum finds Simmons quite the dish, but she finds in him something more than a passing fancy. She jumps into her sleek sports car, follows the ambulance back down to the hospital and waylays Mitchum in a diner. Generous with his affections, Mitchum breaks a date with his steady girlfriend (Mona Freeman) in order to spend a perfectly `innocent' evening of dining and dancing with Simmons.

But his experience with fractures and coronaries hasn't equipped him to deal with a dangerously scrambled psyche. Simmons first invites Freeman to lunch so she can humiliate her by spilling all the details, cunningly tweaked up, of her `innocent' rendezvous with Mitchum. Then she arranges for him to take on the job of family chauffeur, installing him in a garage apartment (just like Joe Gillis in Sunset Blvd.). And she hits up her stepmother to lend Mitchum the money to start up his own business as a car mechanic. Telling himself that he's just looking out for Number One, Mitchum blithely lets her erase any boundaries between them.

Klaxons start bleating, however, when she pounds on his bedroom door in the middle of the night with a cockamamie story about O'Neil hovering over her bed and playing with gas again; the earlier incident, she claims, was just a smokescreen. She tells him, too, that the stepmother reneged on his loan – in order to get back at her. Mitchum's wariness enrages Simmons and redoubles her delusional obstinacy.

When her father and stepmother perish in a spectacular freak accident (their car plummeted in reverse down the steep ravine abutting the driveway), the heiress Simmons finds herself charged with murder. As does Mitchum – he had the expertise to sabotage the vehicle. Wily attorney Leon Ames (in a small but succulent part) sees the defendants' marriage as the path to acquittal. Which leaves Mitchum with a Hobson's choice – risking either the gas chamber or the psychotic wrath of a woman he never loved....

Though Preminger can deploy twists of plot with the best of them, he had a subtler knack of keeping his audience off-balance, never quite sure in which direction the story might develop. So for a while we share the perplexity of Mitchum, so laid back that he doesn't grasp that he's playing with a five-alarm blaze until it's too late; opportunistic but lazy, he's the perfect stooge.

Simmons may have been working within her limitations in her low-voltage, passive-aggressive performance, but she fits the character, who operates in a world inhabited only by herself. She's not a duplicitous vixen scheming to get what she wants; what she wants is the only reality she knows. Preminger recognizes this, and gives her one of the movie's quietest, most freighted scenes: During one of Mitchum's flights from her, she snoops as if sleepwalking through his rooms, finally curling up in his easy chair, his sport coat draped around her shoulders against the dawn chill. It's an eerie calm before the final storm.