Angel Face has always for me been a kind of cut rate version of Sunset Boulevard without all the glitz and glamor of a Hollywood setting. Jean Simmons is not an older woman here, but she most certainly is as much of a femme fatale as Gloria Swanson playing Norma Desmond.
Robert Mitchum plays an ambulance driver who responds to the home that Simmons lives in with father Herbert Marshall and stepmother Barbara O'Neil. For no discernible reason Simmons hates O'Neil feeling she should be number one in her father's life. She hatches a scheme and draws the hapless Mitchum in.
The main problem with Angel Face is Robert Mitchum is much too strong a screen presence to play what is essentially a weak character. I never quite was able to believe him in the part.
On the other hands Simmons does very well cast against type. She's usually good people on the screen, sexy, but good. She is one cunning minx in this film.
Otto Preminger directed Angel Face and he was his usual tyrannical self on the set. So much so that according to Lee Server's fine biography of Mitchum, he got overenthusiastic trying to demonstrate a proper reaction to Jean Simmons on how to take a slap. Mitchum felt so bad for her that he intervened, asking Preminger in no uncertain terms to see what his reaction would be if Preminger slapped him.
Angel Face is an interesting noir melodrama that could have used a few improvements.
Robert Mitchum plays an ambulance driver who responds to the home that Simmons lives in with father Herbert Marshall and stepmother Barbara O'Neil. For no discernible reason Simmons hates O'Neil feeling she should be number one in her father's life. She hatches a scheme and draws the hapless Mitchum in.
The main problem with Angel Face is Robert Mitchum is much too strong a screen presence to play what is essentially a weak character. I never quite was able to believe him in the part.
On the other hands Simmons does very well cast against type. She's usually good people on the screen, sexy, but good. She is one cunning minx in this film.
Otto Preminger directed Angel Face and he was his usual tyrannical self on the set. So much so that according to Lee Server's fine biography of Mitchum, he got overenthusiastic trying to demonstrate a proper reaction to Jean Simmons on how to take a slap. Mitchum felt so bad for her that he intervened, asking Preminger in no uncertain terms to see what his reaction would be if Preminger slapped him.
Angel Face is an interesting noir melodrama that could have used a few improvements.