Rent Angel Face (1952)

Fall with the angel. - Angel Face review by RhysH

From the minute you see Diane (Jean Simmons) playing the piano, the white face framed by the black wig, Morticia like, you know she is trouble. Frank (Robert Mitchum) gives her the Mitchum quizzical look and you know there is only one trajectory for this couple and that is downwards and in the final scene backwards.

A good story, neatly told, with fine performances. Barbara O'Neil is great as the wicked stepmother.

Very Good - Angel Face review by MCG

If you are a fan of Preminger's early noir films you will like this. Not quite as good as Where The Sidewalk Ends, but far superior to Fallen Angel and Whirlpool. Great performances from Mitchum and Simmons, great script and solid direction from Preminger. I think this film might have been cooked up as a sort of "homage" to the masterpiece that is Sunset Boulevard which was released a year earlier. It is not in that league, but it is a very solid and enjoyable film and Mitchum fans will enjoy seeing him in very similar territory to that seen in Out of the Past.

Film Noir (spoiler). - Angel Face review by Steve

Polished psychological melodrama which was overlooked at the time, but has since accumulated a critical following. Jean Simmons plays a strange little rich girl who intends to murder her stepmother (Barbara O'Neil) so she can have her father (Herbert Marshall) for herself. Robert Mitchum is the family chauffeur she entangles in her insanity.

Simmons is the standout in a really eerie performance, deepened by the ambient piano music she improvises when alone. This can be read as film noir with angel face as the femme fatale, and Mitchum as the useful dupe she means to exploit. And it's fascinating up until the point she accidentally kills her father in a car crash with his wife.

But the court case isn't plausible. The deadly, narcissistic sociopath suddenly changes. And the conclusion might as well have been written by the officials of the Production Code, after they re-watched Mitchum in Out of the Past (1947). Still, this is melodrama and improbable plot diversions are part of the deal.

Much of the attraction is the pessimistic noir mood, enhanced by Dimitri Tiomkin's plangent score. The automobile smash is well done for the period. Otto Preminger directs the slender plot with style but little suspense. It's Simmons' haunting performance as the beautiful, broken angel of death which most endures.