The reluctant movie star: 10 essential Robert Mitchum films
Born one hundred years ago today, Robert Mitchum was possibly the most naturalistic actor of them all. Even a jail term in 1948 for possession of marijuana didn't dent his popularity. Graeme Ross selects his 10 best Mitchum movies
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Cooler than Steve McQueen, more of a rebel than Marlon Brando and tougher than John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, possibly the most naturalistic screen actor of them all, was born exactly 100 years ago today in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Mitchum always professed to be a reluctant movie star, constantly playing down his considerable talents ("I have two styles of acting – with or without a horse") but behind the laconic, sleepy eyed image and that inimitable bandy legged walk lay a consummate professional even if he did have a healthy disregard for the movie industry.
He perfected a studied insouciance that fooled people into thinking he wasn't really doing much acting, and perhaps he wasn't as he pretty much invested much of his own (multiple) personalities into his roles. Perhaps it was this laid-back self-deprecating demeanour that led to him being so underrated for so long. He was only ever nominated once for an Oscar, not that he cared particularly. It was only in the 1970s that he began to be recognised by the critics for the quality of his acting. The public always loved him, however, recognising that he was the real deal unlike so many other manufactured stars.
Even a jail term in 1948 for possession of marijuana, which would have ruined other careers, didn't dent his popularity at the box office. The drugs bust was later proven to be a fit-up and Mitchum's conviction was quashed but did allow him to demonstrate his trademark deadpan humour when he gave his occupation as "former actor" when he was arrested.
It wasn't his first brush with the law, of course, having ridden railway boxcars as a youth and escaping from a chain gang when he was just 16 after being arrested for vagrancy, and he was quite partial to a fight off-screen. These life experiences and his ''outsider'' movie roles helped Mitchum become the screen's first proper anti-hero – oh, how we could do with a Robert Mitchum now.
For someone who disdained the movie business, Mitchum made a heck of a lot of them – around 130, many pretty forgettable apart from Mitchum himself, of course. Even in a terrible movie, all eyes were on Mitchum. But there are some which are rather terrific. To celebrate his centenary, this is my top 10 Robert Mitchum films taking in his best performances.
10 The Story of GI Joe (William Wellman 1945)
After almost 30 movies in mostly bit parts, and as the heavy in low-budget westerns, 27-year-old Mitchum made a huge impact in his breakthrough role in this acclaimed war movie. He played the battle hardened army lieutenant whose main job during the Second World War is to write to wives and relatives to inform them of the deaths of their loved ones. Mitchum displayed compassion and sensitivity in a smallish role for which he garnered his only Oscar nomination. Typically, he didn’t bother to turn up for the ceremony, but Mitchum’s star was well and truly on the rise.
9 Pursued (Raoul Walsh 1947)
After his success in The Story of GI Joe, Mitchum began to win interesting roles and 1947 proved a stellar year for him as he cemented his status as a star of film noir with a clutch of noteworthy performances in some top films such as Crossfire, Out of the Past and this forgotten gem, arguably the first noir western. Director Walsh seamlessly fused all the classic hallmarks of film noir in a western setting and the result was this pitch-black psychological oater so different from the typical sagebrush saga. Yet Pursued was neglected for many years until Martin Scorsese paid for the print to be restored. Featuring one of Mitchum’s most striking performances as the conflicted, fatalistic outsider tortured by his past, Pursued and Mitchum’s performance deserve urgent re-evaluation.
8 El Dorado (Howard Hawks 1967)
Mitchum described his role in this virtual remake of Hawks’s 1959 classic Rio Bravo as “John Wayne’s leading lady” and just like its predecessor, El Dorado is great fun as the two old stagers bounce off one another perfectly. Mitchum took the Dean Martin role from the original as the drunken sheriff – “a tin star with a drunk pinned to it” according to Wayne’s ageing gunfighter who helps him against the bad guys. Unlike Dino, Mitchum doesn’t get to sing but that’s not to say he couldn’t have as he had a fine baritone voice heard to good effect in several of his movies. In fact, Mitchum made a couple of successful albums and even had a hit single with the theme song from the only movie he ever directed (uncredited), 1958’s Thunder Road.
7 Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (John Huston (1957)
The first of Mitchum’s collaborations with frequent co-star Deborah Kerr, with the pair cast as a tough but tender marine and a nun marooned on an isolated Pacific island overrun by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. Mitchum and Kerr loved working together and their on-screen chemistry makes for a touching and hugely entertaining film with just the right amount of sexual frisson around the relationship, which is never consummated. Mitchum is so natural in the role that he barely seems to be acting at all. Disappointingly, apart from a cameo in The List of Adrian Messenger, Mitchum never worked with Huston again, turning down Clark Gable’s part in The Misfits as he reckoned working with Huston might kill him. After the experience of swimming in alligator infested waters on Heaven Knows, Mr Allison, he may have had a point.
6 Angel Face (Otto Preminger 1953)
After his initial success, Mitchum found himself locked into a contract with Howard Hughes at RKO. This saw a plethora of undistinguished films, usually involving Jane Russell and set in Mexico, but in among the chaff there was the odd gem. He gave a deeply moving performance as a broken down rodeo rider in The Lusty Men in 1952 and in this often overlooked entry in the Mitchum canon, he took his familiar noir role as the prize chump manipulated by Jean Simmons’ deranged femme fatale. And of all the besotted saps in film noir no one fell so hard as Mitchum. The ending is a doozy (spoiler alert!) as the unhinged Simmons reverses her roadster over a cliff taking the hapless Mitchum with her just as he pops the cork on a bottle of champagne. What a way to go.
5 Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards 1975)
Everyone’s ideal Philip Marlowe was pushing 60 by the time he got his chance as Raymond Chandler’s classic knight errant private detective. However, Mitchum’s age and trademark sleepy demeanor worked for him, investing Marlowe with palpable world-weariness. Novice director Richards and cinematographer John A Alonzo brilliantly evoked a time and a place – Chandler’s 1940s Los Angeles with reverential detail and the film’s burnished, orange hued look is beautifully complemented by Mitchum as a tired, crumpled, yet grimly heroic Marlowe.
4 The Friends of Eddie Coyle (Peter Yates 1973)
George V Higgins’ source novel provided Mitchum with a marvellous autumnal role as the titular character, a small-time career criminal who finds himself inexorably caught between the Boston underworld and the police as he tries to do his best by himself and his family. In this film, more than any other, Mitchum proved how great he could be when given the right part and a chance to develop it. Eddie may be a hood but in Mitchum’s hands, tired resignation in every gesture, desperation oozing from every hard-boiled line he utters, we feel empathy for his situation all the way to the downbeat yet inevitable ending.
3 Cape Fear (J Lee Thompson 1962)
Forget Scorsese’s remake, this is the one to watch and despite the considerable presence of Gregory Peck (who also produced) it’s Mitchum’s show all the way. As sadistic sex offender Max Cady, who blames Peck for putting him behind bars, Mitchum swaggers his way through this tense and chilling thriller, exuding sexual menace as he terrorises Peck and his family. In the remake, Robert De Niro comes across as some form of grand guignol superman, but Mitchum fearlessly makes the relentless, omnipotent Cady so much more believable, more real and absolutely terrifying.
2 Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur 1947)
As a basically decent man unable to escape his past, Mitchum sealed his status as film noir's greatest protagonist in a movie that, with its femme fatales, flashbacks, convoluted plot and Mitchum's resigned world-weary voiceover, is the very definition of the genre. And Mitchum gets to toss off some of the greatest lines in noir history, one of which: "Baby, I don't care" served as the title of Lee Server's definitive biography.
1 The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton 1955)
Laughton's only film as a director is a unique experience, a riveting slice of American gothic unlike anything before or since, which was a public and critical failure on its release but is now viewed as a masterpiece. A parable on good and evil and possessing a dreamlike quality, The Night of the Hunter features Mitchum's most memorable performance as a psychotic preacher, the embodiment of evil with "love" and "hate" tattooed on his knuckles, who murders a widow and menaces her children in pursuit of a cache of money. Mitchum threw himself into the role with unmistakable relish, never faltering in the grotesqueness of his character, yet daring to be funny in a performance that ranks as one of the most chilling ever committed to film. When Laughton warned him that the character he was playing was a complete shit, Mitchum merely replied, "Present". Devestated by the film's failure, Laughton never directed another, but Mitchum considered him the best director he ever worked with, and the film has deservedly become a cult classic.
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