When I saw Angel Face in a Film Noir class in college, I was stunned. How could a movie be this dark, yet still so appealing? But, that, as I learned more about film, is what Film Noir is all about. Noir movies do not always have happy endings (most of them do not) and they most definitely do not have to have everything throughout the movie be idyllic and cheery. After all, Noir is about life post-WWII…it’s dark and brooding, just like war. So, getting back to Preminger’s masterpiece Angel Face…I mean, this is the man who directed one of my favorite Noir titles (and often referred to as one of the first big titles of the genre), Laura. That film ends with a somewhat uplifting ending. I mean – only the “bad guy” gets it. In Angel Face, forget trying to figure out who's bad and who's good and what’s going to happen next because you never will. And the ending…well, let’s just say you will be shocked. Mitchum plays the perfect Film Noir wanderer…he’s searching for something and just might have found it with Jean Simmons, a very spoiled, EXTREMELY troubled young lady with a lazy father and a rich stepmother. Enter Mitchum who Simmons sets her sights and her clutches on. It’s a timeless tale of love gone wrong…with several major roadblocks set up along the way.
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