#he sees a bird? 'like howl'. playing with dolls? 'this is sophie and this is howl'. telling him a bedtime story? 'tell howl and the wolf'.

[asofterepilogue]

ghibli's howl's moving castle is truly not a good adaptation, doesn't follow either the letter or the spirit of the book, barely recognisable at all beyond a few concepts and character names.

but who could actually be mad about it when it's such a good movie anyway? really great on its own AND it's like watching fanfiction AND you still get to enjoy the book because the movie does nothing to ruin it for you. this is what all unfaithful adaptations should aim for.

#I'm usually not a fan of adaptations taking more liberties than absolutely necessary #but the movie is so good in a way that doesn't detract from the book so it's basically the best of both worlds #two stories for the price of one I get to have my cake and eat it too etc. etc. #howl's moving castle #I showed it to my 4yo nephew a couple weeks ago and now he wants to watch it daily and he talks about it constantly #he sees a bird? 'like howl'. playing with dolls? 'this is sophie and this is howl'. telling him a bedtime story? 'tell howl and the wolf'. #he literally will not shut up about it #which I love btw it's nice that he loves something that I don't have to pretend to care about lol #mine

[lifejustgotawkward]

365 Day Movie Challenge (2018) - #150: Angel Face (1953) - dir. Otto Preminger

I caught the noir-esque drama Angel Face on TCM recently and despite “Noir Alley” host Eddie Muller’s insistence that the film is a masterpiece, I was seriously disappointed. Contrary to what one might expect from lead actress Jean Simmons as the title “angel face,” Diane Tremayne - the automatic assumption that the character must be a glamorous femme fatale with only the coldest, most evil of intentions towards her mark, Robert Mitchum’s Frank Jessup - instead I found that Diane was a pitiable figure. The story is complicated, but this clearly is obviously the victim of mental illness and it is unclear as to whether her incestuous feelings for her father, Charles (Herbert Marshall), were one-sided or, in fact, realized in actuality.

When we are introduced to ambulance driver Frank Jessup at the beginning of the film, he is answering a call at the Tremayne house, where Catherine Tremayne is being treated for near-fatal carbon monoxide poisoning from the gas heating system in her bedroom. Shortly after administering medical help to Mrs. Tremayne, Frank meets her stepdaughter, Diane, in the living room. (She is playing a haunting melody on the family piano; externally, this music and the rest of the film’s score was composed by the great Dimitri Tiomkin.) Unsurprisingly for 1953, Frank tries to calm down the hysterical Diane by slapping her; in another annoyingly typical move for a story from this era, she reacts by immediately developing a fixation on Frank, following him out of the house when he drives away and meeting up with him at a nearby diner when his hospital shift ends. In spite of Frank’s relationship with a nurse he works alongside, Mary Wilton (Mona Freeman), he quickly embarks on an affair with Diane.

It’s more than a little odd, the way Diane forms an attachment to Frank as if he’s the first man she has ever seen, but perhaps that is because of her disturbing affection for her father. We know that Diane is still a teenager (she’s 19) and an emotionally immature one at that; she lost her mother during the Blitz in World War II, presumably grew closer to her father because of that and now resents her stepmother for drawing away her father’s attention. (Angel Face is nothing if not a muddled study of the Electra complex.) It is evident that Diane was responsible for the “accidental” incident that nearly killed Catherine. It seems that Frank is smart enough to recognize that Diane is a mixed-up individual, but he is still dumb enough to spend time with her and be sucked into her world, ignoring all the warning signs.

As ridiculous as the plot is in Angel Face, I felt sorry for Diane. She is not heartless. When the character commits a heinous crime halfway through the story, she is genuinely remorseful and attempts to come clean to the DA; the only reason she doesn’t is because her lawyer, Fred Barrett (an exceptionally smarmy Leon Ames), prevents her from doing so. In one scene, where we see Diane tiptoe through Frank’s empty bedroom and tenderly caress his various possessions, we perceive that her intense need to express her sexual desire is fueled by the romantic notions of a woman who is, in many ways, still a little girl.

Angel Face is not satisfying either as a film noir (because it’s not one) or as a sexual psychodrama - not to mention an ending that you can see barreling towards you at a hundred miles an hour - but there are two reasons that the film is worth checking out. For one thing, the score by Dimitri Tiomkin is really beautiful. Secondly, Jean Simmons was a wonderfully versatile actress with a career spanning from the mid-1940s to the late 2000s, appearing in a range of projects that included Laurence Olivier’s adaptation of Hamlet, the musical Guys and Dolls, the historical epic Spartacus, the popular TV miniseries “The Thorn Birds” and, quite memorably in my adolescence, the portrayal of “Grandma” Sophie in the English-language voice cast of Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle. She was capable of fitting seamlessly into films regardless of genre or time period and Angel Face shows Simmons’ ability to elevate weak material and make her performance compelling regardless.

The tale of how Simmons was treated on the set of Angel Face is truly sobering; legendarily awful producer Howard Hughes was so incensed by her rejection of his sexual advances that he went out of his way to make her jobs hell for her. He maintained control over her work offers while she was under contract at RKO, refusing to lend her out to Paramount for Roman Holiday (which won Audrey Hepburn an Oscar and made her a star) and choosing the roles Simmons could do for her. Furthermore, Hughes asked Angel Face director Otto Preminger to be as cruel as possible to Simmons, requesting multiple takes for the aforementioned scene that required Robert Mitchum to slap her hard across the face (which Mitchum was reportedly pissed off by, later slapping Preminger himself with the rhetorical question “Is that how you want it?”).

Feel free to watch Angel Face if you are a fan of Jean Simmons or if you would like to become one, but otherwise, you may want to take a pass.

#365 day movie challenge 2018 #angel face #1953 #1950s #50s #otto preminger #old hollywood #film noir #noir #jean simmons #robert mitchum #herbert marshall #barbara o'neil #dimitri tiomkin #mona freeman #leon ames #tcm #eddie muller #noir alley