Angel Face

Preminger's noir for RKO. Robert Mitchum plays Frank, an ambulance driver, and Jean Simmons plays Diane, the daughter of a wealthy household. A call comes to the house one night: her stepmother has been poisoned by gas. It looks like an accident. Frank meets the girl and is soon employed there as a chauffeur. Then there is a second accident. The frame is familiar, but what Preminger does is refuse to draw the woman as either monster or victim; he shows at once that Diane knows what she is doing and does not know why. There is a much-repeated story from the production. During a scene requiring a slap, Preminger is said to have demanded take after take, until Mitchum turned and slapped the director, asking whether that was what he wanted. The anecdote is taken as a measure of the tension on set. The closing is one of the coldest in noir, ending without a word of explanation. Near the top of the genre for anyone who loves 1950s noir. For a viewer expecting a moral conclusion, the film delivers no lesson at all.