Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Angel Face - 1952

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Transcript of Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For: Angel Face - 1952

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ANGEL FACE 1952lecinemadreams.blogspot.com/2013/05/angel-face-1952.html

As a child, the only film directors whose names and faces I recognized were Alfred Hitchcock and Otto Preminger.Hitchcock: for the obvious reasons (Honestly, was there ever such a talented, yet at the same time, tirelessly self-promoting, self-mythologizing director? One had to wonder when he found time to plot out all those famouslyintricate shots while still having the energy to chase Tippi Hedren around the set); and Otto Preminger: for hisfrequent, colorful and quotable appearances on television talk shows like Merv Griffin, but especially for his portrayalof supervillain, Mr. Freeze, on the Batman TV series.Based on the quality (or, more accurately, the lack) of his latter-career output (Hurry Sundown, Skidoo, Tell Me ThatYou Love Me, Junie Moon, Such Good Friends), for the longest time I considered Otto Preminger more an eccentricTV personality than a serious director. It wasn't until my late-in-life exposure to some of his earlier films on TCM thatI came to appreciate the diversity of this filmmaker’s output and the strides many of his films made in the battleagainst censorship. Although I still only enjoy but a handful of the films Preminger directed in his nearly 50-year career, among myfavorites is Angel Face. A film, if Hollywood legends are to be believed, green-lighted by RKO studio head HowardHughes specifically to make life miserable for soon-to-depart contract actress and recent Hughes object-of-obsession, Jean Simmons. (Check out IMDB’s Trivia section for details, or better still, the commentary track on theDVD.)

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Jean Simmons as Diane Tremayne

Robert Mitchum as Frank Jessup

The plot of Angel Face is your typical '50s femme fatale film noir to the point of déjà vu. Yet, one enlivenedconsiderably by a particularly unsympathetic turn by genre stalwart Robert Mitchum, and the pleasingly against-typeassaying of the role of an alluring psychopath by the beautiful, but to me, usually ineffectual, Jean Simmons.

Ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Mitchum) falls for dark-eyed socialite/siren, Diane Tremayne (LOVE that name!)when called to her estate to look into a suspicious case of gas inhalation suffered by Diane’s wealthy stepmother.With surprisingly little effort on her part, the distraught but grateful heiress insinuates herself into the life of Frank andstandby girlfriend Mary (Mona Freeman), successfully opening up a chasm between the couple she’s more thanwilling to step into. In record time, and without alerting the suspicions of the shrewd but somewhat opportunisticFrank, Diane not only gets the laid-back lothario to detail for her the particulars of his love life and professionalaspirations (a former race car driver, Frank dreams of opening a garage of his own), but unsubtly unburdens herselfto him her own woeful tale of how she and her beloved father (Herbert Marshall) have fallen under the despotic swayof her bridge-club-addicted, purse-strings clutching, wealthy evil stepmother, Catherine (Barbara O’Neil).

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Family PlotEver-leery moneybags Catherine Tremayne (Barbara O'Neil), listens guardedly asDiane (Jean Simmons) transparently campaigns to have hunky ambulance driverFrank Jessup taken on as a personal chauffeur. Meanwhile, emasculated novelist

and full time lapdog Charles Tremayne (Herbert Marshall) just hopes he's notdoing anything to draw his wife's ire...like breathing.

Faster than you can say Double Indemnity and before that hearkened-after postman has had a chance to ring evenonce, Frank and Diane find themselves suspects in a nasty case of double homicide. Was it really an accident?Were they in on it together? Did you ever doubt it for a minute? To fans of the genre, the who, what, where, andwhys of the plot won’t come as much of a surprise. What really makes Preminger’s steamy goulash of RaymondChandler and James M. Cain so much black-hearted fun are its characters. The dark alleys of obsession andfixation Angel Face takes you through are murky with hidden agendas, neurotic pathologies, and the kind of moralcynicism that made noir films such a narrative oasis in the desert of suburban conformity that was Hollywood in thepostwar years.

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"Do you love me at all? I must know.""Well, I suppose it's a kind of love. But with a girl like you, how can a man be

sure?"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILMI've always had a thing for film noir. I love all the intrigue, double-crosses, plot twists, and 11th hour surprise revealscharacteristic of the genre, but what has always appealed to me most is the genre's core of nastiness. It alwaysseemed like such a brazen challenge to the Production Code-mandated moral conventions of the day.In today’s climate of moral relativity, we have iniquity devoid of stakes. Barring an overriding imperative of decency,the kind of bad behavior exemplified by Charlie Sheen, Chris Brown, Lindsay Lohan, and the whole reality show“betray each other to win” mentality, exists within a misanthropic vacuum. That's why I have no patience withcontemporary films which revel in the display of bad people behaving badly (cue, Quentin Tarantino); there's nomeasurable "good" behavior in these films for contrast.Conversely, film noir works as the yin to the yang of America's idealized self-perception during the '40s and '50s. Atime when movies, TV, and advertising all promoted a standard, middle-class image of conformity typified by those“social guidance films” shown in schools back then.

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The Ladies Who LunchDiane not-so-innocently sets up a lunch date with Frank's girlfriend, Mary (Mona

Freeman), to let her know that Frank was not at all where he said he was theprevious night.

The nihilism of film noir stood as a thrilling alternative to all those inevitable happy endings in movies from the 1940s& '50s. It is almost exhilarating to see movies in which people operate out of flagrant self-interest and behave inways totally unconcerned with bettering society or helping their fellow man. Another nice difference is that so manyof the women of film noir are so independent-minded. They're dangerous, sexually aggressive, and exert powerover their lives. These extreme cultural contrasts are what give film noir its kick. Without the subtextual context of arepressed culture for the lead characters to rebel against, film noir would be like a great many of the movies and TVprograms of today: just a bunch of unsympathetic people meeting bad ends.

Otto Preminger would revisit the theme of a close father/daughter relationshipthreatened by

a stepmother in 1958s Bonjour Tristesse

PERFORMANCES

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Prior to seeing Angel Face, I’d read so many accounts of how unhappy Jean Simmons was during the making of thefilm that I leapt to the assumption that her portrayal of a wicked vamp was one of those against-typeembarrassments like Jennifer Jones in Duel in the Sun (Simmons' embarrassment would come many decades later,as Helen Lawson in the 1981 TV version of Valley of the Dolls). I couldn't have been more wrong. Although I've onlyseen Simmons in a handful of films (she’s particularly appealing in 1953s The Actress), her Angel Face femmefatale is one of her strongest, most persuasive screen performances.

As the always-plotting Diana, Jean Simmons' somewhat remote, coy appeal isused to great effect in Angel Face

Of course, Simmons’ performance is greatly enhanced by the chemistry she shares with co-star, Robert Mitchum. Asleepy-eyed hunk o’ burnin' love a person doesn't need Method Acting to believably express a sexual obsessionover. Mitchum may not be an actor with a particularly broad range, but within that range, there’s not another leadingman who can touch him. In the films I consider to be his best: Angel Face, Out of the Past, His Kind of Woman,Cape Fear, and The Night of the Hunter, Mitchum's slouching brand of masculine charisma has always revealed ahint of vulnerable malleability. Either that or outright sexual menace. In either instance he dominates the screen witha natural ease that makes him a charismatic, fascinating actor to watch.

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Fave character actor Leon Ames plays defense attorney Fred Barrett. A reversalof his chores in 1946s The Postman Always Rings Twice .

THE STUFF OF FANTASYFans of film noir generally agree that much of the genre’s predominately male perspective is fueled by a fear ofwomen. Perhaps that’s what makes them so entertaining. It's like the male id unleashed...a woman with any kind ofpower perceived only as a threat to manhood. Indeed, unlike the self-sacrificing heroines of the popular “women’sfilms” of the day, the women of film noir tend to call all the shots and are as likely to kill a man as kiss him. AngelFace consistently juxtaposes Frank's loutish neglect of his girlfriend Mary, with his being manipulated and ledaround by the nose by the scheming Diane. At a time when women held very little social power and were inevitablyrelegated to supporting, serving, and supplicating, film noir provided one of the few arenas where women wereallowed to show some moxie and guts. Alas, because the vast majority of these films were written and directed bymales, women with power were also almost always made to pay for their gender transgressions, with "natural order"usually restored by fadeout.

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なぜあなたは死んでドロップしないなぜあなたは死んでドロップしない!Roughly translated, Tremayne household maid Chiyo (Max Takasugi) tells her

put-upon husband, Ito (Frank Kamagai) to "Drop dead!"

The world of Angel Face is one where the natural order is corrupted by domineering women (Diane, Catherine, andChiyo) and emasculated men (Frank, Charles, and Ito, the household butler who laments, "The only trouble withAmerica...it spoils the women!").

Revealing herself to be a far more self-possessed and level-headed characterthan initially perceived, Mary, having had enough of Frank's seesawing

emotions, opts for the solid and loving Bill (Kenneth Tobey), a man who doesn'tmake her compete for his affections.

THE STUFF OF DREAMSIf I were to pick my absolute favorite Otto Preminger movie, it would have to be Bonjour Tristesse (1958), that film isjust a dream. But for pure noir bliss, I rate Angel Face above even the superior Laura (1944), which in spite ofits excellence, has always seemed a tad too cool and never really has done much for me. Angel Face has the feel of

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a cheap pulp novel brought to life, complete with its economy of narrative and straight-to-the-point characterizations.While falling short of being a true classic of the genre, it stands as an example of the genre at its best. A fast anddark thrill ride through the Hollywood Hills...but I'd skip the short-cuts if I were you.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

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