One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely Fantastic

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Great movie but my big issue with it was what seems like a very obvious plot error. Diane confessed openly to the police and her lawyer and was subsequently arrested. This would have been documented and probably recorded by the police. Her lawyer kept trying to undo her confession and put it on both her and Frank. Discussions of how the jury would see things were mentioned. The truth is that in the case of a confession, there wouldn't be any reason for a jury to even be involved. She would not be put on trial because there's nothing to prove. She would simply attend a sentencing hearing and be punished according to various factors. I really think the writer and even Preminger didn't do enough to resolve this sufficiently. Regardless of what her lawyer was trying to do, she was already in custody without any visible investigation and was confessing to anyone who would listen. Perhaps because she was a woman (it is the 50s after all) who was hysterical over the death of her father, they may have thought she was out of her mind and talking crazy. But if that's the case, why would they arrest her? Just too big of a plot hole to be overlooked.

After watching this I wasn't sure it was a film noir after all, so I looked up the term and found that there is no consensus on what a film noir is. Does it refer to pessimistic mood, or camera style, or details of plot, or smoking tobacco all the time (this is a point in Ebert's don't-miss Guide to Film Noir)? This film has pessimistic mood, and an all-night diner, and Robert Mitchum, so okay, but it has no gangsters or low-lifes, is largely set in a nice house, and really is the drama of the unfortunate Tremayne family into which an innocent bystander stumbles. Everyone involved went through the war and maybe this is a record of national PTSD somehow.Once upon a time a successful novelist, Charles Tremayne, lived in London with his beloved wife and loving daughter Diane. Then a Nazi bomb killed the wife and emotionally shattered the husband, who hasn't written a word since. He has moved to Beverly Hills and has married a rich woman who apparently does her best to love him and Diane. But Diane spurns her as an intruder and blames her for the loss of the man her father once was. She plays moody tunes on the piano and plots her stepmother Catherine's death. She's not a sociopath, or a schemer motivated by greed or lust. She seems to be a ruthless twenty-one-year-old, emotionally still nine years old, intent on living with Daddy and having everything right again.Enter Frank Jessup, who was himself "shot out of a tank", and now works an ambulance driver. He is sane, perceptive, and competent, but seems to be drifting through life; he has a girlfriend, Mary, but hasn't committed himself to her; he dreams of setting himself up as a mechanic for sports cars but hasn't made a serious move in that direction, seven years after the end of the war. Now Diane makes a play for him and pries him away from the woman who would really have been much better for him. What is her motive? It isn't lust. It seems to be partly desire for a .. playmate? Accomplice? Frank gets pried away without much resistance, but not because he has a wild passion for Diane. It's more that he's just pliable. When a pretty woman kisses him and offers more kisses, the inner will to induce him to break it off because he really intends to be elsewhere never manifests itself. Diane gets Frank hired as her family's chauffeur, offering to have her stepmother set him up with a garage. But then she tries to convince Frank that Catherine has double-crossed him. This is supposed to make Frank hate Catherine, but it doesn't work. He is not a dope, either, and has caught on to Diane's intentions, and tries to talk her down from it. This doesn't work. Neither does her plan, though, on several levels.After some very effective moments, the film (in my opinion) bogs down when Diane's high-paid lawyer comes up with the stunt of having Frank and Diane get married and portraying them to the jury as innocent young lovers. Maybe it's just that I can't for a second imagine a juror being impressed by this. On the other hand the trial sequence is not full of clichés. In the aftermath, the mood of despair sets in. Frank tries to get back with Mary, who acts like a normal person instead of a movie character: she doesn't hate him, but she's moved on. Diane's last hope is that Frank will somehow be the new man in her life. He's smart enough not to go along with that. But he's still too willing to take innocent suggestions even from someone he knows he ought not to take them from. That turns out to be his tragic flaw: that when a pretty woman offers him a lift, as it were, his first and last impulse is to go along.So this is not really a "typical film noir" if you think that means that the characters are all unchecked fountains of vice and melodrama. Nearly all of the characters in the film are laid-back and normal people doing their jobs, as it were. The detective and the D.A. are not crooked; the sharp lawyer is doing his job as he sees it; Mary and Frank and Charles and Catherine are all decent people. (I rather reject the idea that Frank is "amoral" in this film, although he should be more decisive.) Even Diane strikes me as being somewhat pitiable; she is definitely capable of remorse, doesn't want Frank blamed for her actions, and is not a "femme fatale" except in the literal sense, you know. Thinking about this, it might make the film's outlook particularly pessimistic: most people are pretty normal, but somehow it all works out badly anyway. Anyway, I think the relative absence of melodramatic tropes is refreshing.

With Otto Preminger directing and Robert Mitchum as your star how can you go wrong? OK this film does take a while to get into gear, but when it does there is no shifting back into reverse. Unique great films like this one are the reason I'm doing this project to watch every single classic film noir I can get my hands on. There is no way a major Hollywood studio would ever tell a story like this today. The big Hollywood studio that produced this film was the faltering Howard Hughes-helmed RKO. The box office takings from this 1952 film certainly didn't help and the studio fell over the cliff a few years later. The 'Angel Face' of the title, Jean Simmons was under contract with RKO but wanted to bat her eyelashes for a different studio. She tried to sabotage her unwanted contract by cutting her hair short. but Hughes wasn't defeated that easily, he just forced her to wear a wig for this film.

In California, the ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) and his partner head to a mansion in Beverly Hills to assist the millionaire Mrs. Catherine Tremayne (Barbara O'Neil) that was poisoned with gas, but her doctor had already medicated her. When Frank is leaving the house, he meets Catherine's twenty year-old stepdaughter Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons) that follows him in her Jaguar. After-hours, they go to a restaurant and Frank finds an excuse to his girlfriend Mary Wilton (Mona Freeman) to not visit her and he dates Diane and they go to a night-club. Diane has a crush on Frank and on the next morning, she meets Mary and tells to her what Frank and she did. Frank and Mary are saving money to open a garage since he is an efficient mechanic. Diane convinces Frank to be better paid working as a chauffeur for her family. Soon Frank learns that Diane hates her stepmother and he decides to quit his job. But Diane seduces him and he stay with the Tremayne family. When Mr. and Mrs. Tremayne have a fatal car accident, Diane and Frank become the prime suspect of the police and they go to court charged of murder. Now their only chance is the strategy of the efficient defense attorney Fred Barrett (Leon Ames)."Angel Face" is among the best film-noir I have seen, with a perfect female fatale, amoral story and dark conclusion. Jean Simmons is impressive, with Oedipus complex and her angel face that manipulates Frank and even her stepmother. The melancholic music score completes this great movie. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Alma em Pânico" ("Soul in Panic")