DVD NOTES.('Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection')(Video recording review)

THE CREDIBLE HULK -- Robert Mitchum was a marijuana smoker in an era of drinkers, and his heavy-lidded eyes and laconic drawl seem to come straight out of the postwar cool-jazz scene. As proved by the masterworks in a new six-disk boxed set, "Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection" (Warner Bros.), the looming, circumspect actor--who left his Hell's Kitchen home at fourteen to travel by boxcar--took control of the tempo onscreen with an offbeat energy that practically defined film noir.

"Angel Face," from 1952, is one of the greatest works of the genre. Howard Hughes hired the ruthlessly efficient Otto Preminger to direct it, giving him a free hand in exchange for a tight budget and a short schedule, and Preminger made the most of it. Mitchum brings a wounded confusion to the role of Frank Jessup, an ambulance driver for the Beverly Hills Fire Department who dreams of opening a high-end auto-repair shop. Responding to a suspicious gas leak at a hilltop mansion, Jessup encounters a headstrong young woman, Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons), who lives with her beloved, henpecked father (Herbert Marshall) and her hated (and wealthy) stepmother (Mona Freeman). Lured by Diane's money and her lust for him, Jessup gets caught in a web of depraved schemes. Preminger, ...