British postcard, no. FA 222. Photo: Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987).
British postcard, no. FA 223. Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987).
French postcard by Editions Damilla, Paris, no 94967. Photo: Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987).
French postcard by Editions La Malibran, Paris, in the Collection Cinema Couleur, no MC 32, 1989. Photo: Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987).
Locating a mysterious crooner named Johnny Favourite
In Angel Heart (1987), Mickey Rourke plays Harry Angel, an unshaven, chain-smoking private detective in Brooklyn in 1955. Harry is hired by sinister Mr. Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) to locate a mysterious crooner named Johnny Favourite.
The singer disappeared in the early 1940s and hasn't been seen since. The money is good and the job doesn't seem that risky, so Harry accepts.
His search leads Harry from the streets of New York to jazz clubs in Harlem and, finally, to the sweltering swamps of Louisiana. He meets a variety of characters, all of whom have little to say about Favourite. The singer entered the war, was shot and had his face reconstructed. After leaving the hospital, he vanished from the face of the earth.
Everybody finds a violent death after Harry talks to them. He is a lot more involved than he initially thought and his search moves inexorably towards a devastating conclusion.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) gave the original cut of Angel Heart an X rating, because of a sex scene involving Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet in which Rourke's buttocks are seen thrusting in a sexual motion. The film's distributor Tri-Star Pictures refused to release it with an X rating, and Parker then removed ten seconds from the scene and the film was granted an R rating.
French postcard by Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. A-C 1259. Photo: Gaumont. Robert De Niro in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987). Caption: You know, in certain religions, the egg is the symbol of a soul... Would you like an egg?
French postcard by Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. A-C 1260. Photo: Gaumont. Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987). Caption: - What are you? Some kind of cop? - My name is Harry Angel, I am a Private detective.
French postcard by Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. A-C 1261. Photo: Gaumont. Charlotte Rampling and Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987). Cation: Johnny is dead, Mr. Angel. And even if he's not, he is for me.
French postcard by Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. A-C 1262. Photo: Gaumont. Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987). Caption: Harry Angel is looking for the truth. Pray he never finds out.
An exuberant exercise in style
When released in 1987, Angel Heart received a mixed reaction from reviewers, who criticised Alan Parker's screenwriting but praised the production design, the score by Trevor Jones, and the cinematography by Michael Seresin, as well as the performances of Mickey Rourke and Lisa Bonet.
Derek Armstrong at AllMovie: "At the brief height of his career, Rourke radiates the mounting hysteria of a man caught in purgatory, surrounded and eventually engulfed by sadistic evil. By the time he pieces together the mystery, the audience has walked in his shoes enough to absorb his emotional outpouring."
Angel Heart underperformed at the North American box office, grossing $17.2 million during its theatrical run against a production budget of $18 million. In the following decades, the film got a strong cult following and is now regarded as influential and underappreciated.
Angel Heart is slowly paced but laced with moments of action and violence that breathe life into it. The smoke-filled rooms, the clothes and the music bring the viewer back to 1955. Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Mississippi Burning) made a beautifully shot, and masterfully edited film. His attention to detail and the moody atmosphere make it a visual masterpiece.
Critic Roger Ebert: "The movie's final revelations make a weird sense, once we figure them out. This is one of those movies where you leave the theatre and re-run the plot in your head, re-interpreting the early scenes in terms of the final shocking revelations. Angel Heart is a thriller and a horror movie, but most of all it's an exuberant exercise in style, in which Parker and his actors have fun taking it to the limit."
French postcard by Humour a la Carte, Paris, no. ST-186. Photo: TriStar Pictures. Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987).
British postcard by Moviedrome, no. M1. Mickey Rourke in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987).
Canadian postcard by Canadian Postcard, no. A-136. Lisa Bonet in Angel Heart (Alan Parker, 1987).
Sources: Derek Armstrong (AllMovie), Roger Ebert (RogerEbert.com), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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