When ambulance driver Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) is summoned to a Beverly Hills mansion after wealthy Catherine Tremayne is evidently poisoned, he finds himself drawn into the orbit of her stepdaughter Diane (Jean Simmons).

Closing out a landmark cycle of noir's that began with Laura, Otto Preminger's Angel Face is one of the filmmakers most enigmatic works. In his essay L'essentiel, Rivette argued that the film was a skeleton key for understanding Preminger's work at large and his belief in mise en scène.

"Preminger believes first in mise en scène, the creation of a precise complex of sets and characters, a network of relationships, an architecture of connections, an animated complex that seems suspended in space." – Jacques Rivette