“The Sundowners” (1960)
Taking the grand Hollywood melodrama into almost untrodden territory for the time — the Australian outback — “The Sundowners” is resolutely unhip, not treasured by cinephiles in the way that “Night Of The Hunter” or “The Friends Of Eddie Coyle” might be. However, it’s still a remarkably effective and absorbing picture (if a little too long), with another sterling performance from Mitchum. Directed by Fred Zinnemann, it sees the actor play Paddy Carmody, an Irish shepherd in Australia (with basically an American accent), who loves his lifestyle, but whose devoted wife (Deborah Kerr) and son (Michael Anderson Jr.) increasingly want to put down more permanent roots. And… that’s sort of it: though there are some impressively photographed landscapes and sheep-drives, there’s not much in the way of major drama at play. The film is instead an admirably low-key portrait of a family and a community (an excellent Peter Ustinov and Glynis Johns among them). The dynamic between Mitchum and Kerr is key to the film — he’s a decent man, but a feckless gambler and an inveterate nomad with it. She loves him deeply, but is fed up with living in a tent. It’s a legitimately moving portrait of a marriage, and the film works because of the deep chemistry between them, and serves as a great example of Mitchum’s inherent generosity as an actor (he stepped in for Gary Cooper at the last minute, insisted on taking second billing to Kerr after they became pals on “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison,” and happily watched her — again — pick up an Oscar nod while he went unrewarded).
“Cape Fear” (1962)
Was ever there an actor less precious about his “star image”? Mitchum’s indelibly evil turn as Max Cady in J. Lee Thompson‘s “Cape Fear,” equalling and perhaps surpassing in depravity his iconic “Night of the Hunter” role, suggests not. The simple embodiment of malevolent revenge and inchoate violence, Cady is a serial rapist who upon release from prison tracks down Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), the man he believes is responsible for his conviction, and terrorizes him and his family, especially preying, given his victims’ knowledge of his prior offenses, on Bowden’s wife (Polly Bergen) and 14 year-old daughter. Due to the restrictions of the time, the word “rape” is never uttered and cuts were insisted upon before the film was passed by censors. Yet perhaps because of those restrictions, the haunting horror of Mitchum’s Cady reverberates even more. He is so omnipresent that you find yourself searching the frame for his outline in the background, even in scenes where you know he’s not there. Thirty years later Scorsese remade the film, giving Peck, Mitchum, and co-star Martin Balsam tip-of-the-hat cameos, but that “Cape Fear” is an entirely different animal. The gruesomeness and sexual violence of Robert De Niro‘s Cady is less psychologically haunting for being so much more sinewy, tattooed, and graphic. Mitchum’s horribly naturalistic and underplayed turn, by contrast, is about inference and implication, a suffocating malevolence that wraps itself around the helpless family like a shroud. It is a masterclass in star power uncompromisingly and brilliantly corralled into the service of an utterly repellent character.
“Ryan’s Daughter” (1970)
After a nearly unprecedented string of classics and blockbusters including films like “The Bridge On The River Kwai,” “Lawrence Of Arabia” and “Doctor Zhivago,” David Lean came a little unstuck with critics for the first time with “Ryan’s Daughter,” which received unusually mixed notices, and was mostly ignored by awards bodies. It’s both fair — it’s wildly overlong and a bit stodgy, and has some questionable performances, most notably Christopher Jones, who feuded withLean, was drugged by co-star Sarah Miles, and retired from acting afterwards — and a little unfair, with many of the film’s finer elements being overlooked. Most notably, a terrific and very atypical performance from Mitchum. A loose adaptation of “Madame Bovary,” it’s set in Ireland in 1916, and sees Miles marry kindly local schoolteacher Charles (Mitchum), only to fall passionately in love with British soldier Major Doryan (Jones), who’s opposed to the nationalist locals. Awkwardly fitting what should probably be an intimate little story into Lean’s mega-widescreen approach (it was the last film to be shot entirely in 70mm Panavision for nearly two decades), it’s uneven and sometimes ill-conceived (as with John Mills’ mentally disabled innocent), but it’s also gorgeous and powerful in places. And Mitchum, cast wildly against type as a mild-mannered, middle-aged cuckold, is absolutely superb. The actor had been in a deep depression,telling Leanthat “I was actually planning on committing suicide” when offered the role, and fought with the filmmaker. But the results speak for themselves, and he came to consider it one of his best performances… rightly so.
