Available at Amazon.com
Angel Face (1952)
Directed by Otto Preminger
Starring Jean Simmons, Mona Frreman, Herbert Marshall, Leon Ames, and Barbara O’Neil
Not rated, B&W, 1.33
Macao (1952)
Directed by Josef Von Sternberg
Starring Jane Russell, William Bendix, Thomas Gomez, and Gloria Grahame
Not rated, B&W, 1.33
Home from the Hill (1960)
Directed by Vincente Minelli
Starring Eleanor Parker, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Everett Sloane, and Luana Patten
Not rated, Color, 2.35 anamorphic
The Sundowners (1960)
Directed by Fred Zinneman
Starring Deborah Kerr, Peter Usitnov, Glynis Johns, and Dina Merrill.
Not rated, Color, 1.85 anamorphic
The Good Guys and the Bad Guys (1969)
Directed by Burt Kennedy
Starring George Kennedy, David Carradine, Tina Louise, Douglas V. Fowley, Lois Nettleton, John Davis Chandler, John Carradine and Martin Balsam.
Rated PG, Color, 2.40 anamorphic
The Yakuza (1975)
Directed by Sydney Pollack
Starring Takakura Ken, and Brian Keith
Rated R, Color, 2.35 anamorphic
The Movies
He may have inspired some imitators (like the pudgy, mostly talent free Michael Madsen),but there has never been anybody quite like Robert Mitchum. Robert Mitchum is cool. He’s a brooding, hulking slab of masculinity, perfectly suited to Film Noir and Westerns. He’s the sort of fella that could beat the crap out of you, sleep with your girlfriend, and you’d still buy him a beer later on.
In terms of “bad boy” actors, Mitchum was one of the few whose image was mostly legit. At age fourteen he was arrest in Georgia for vagancy and sentenced to work on the chain gang. He escaped. His arrest for marijuana possession in the late ’40s was shocking for in those days celebrity crime was not the norm.
Now when a DVD fan hears something like “the Robert Mitchum Signature Collection,” he immediately jumps into a curious bit of doublethink. The first films that come to mind would be Laughton’s Night of the Hunter and the original Cape Fear, so one would naturally assume that those films would not be included as they could sell well as individual titles. And one would be right.
But surprisingly, what we do get with the Robert Mitchum Collection is some good stuff. The collection spans 22 years of Mitchum’s career, and a wide range of his uses. Let’s go movie by movie.
Angel Face
Angel Face is a tight and mean noir by Otto Preminger, director of Laura and master of the genre. The film is thoroughly, and at times inexplicably, engrossing. In it, Mitchum plays Frank Jessup, a big lug ambulance driver who becomes ensnared into the world of aristocrat Diane Tremayne (as portrayed by the beautiful and talented Jean Simmons). Diane forcibly inserts herself between Frank and his girlfriend Mary, convinces him to work as the family chauffeur, and tries to have him kill her step-mother.
Simmons is actually the sole reason this film was made. She had a bitter contract dispute with part-time movie mogul/ full time bug nutty rich guy Howard Hughes. Simmons had one more film in her contract, but was only obligated to work for Hughes for one more month. Knowing that his own productions tended to take years to complete, Hughes contracted the job out to Preminger and decided to keep his meddling to a minimum.
Well, a Howard Hughes minimum.
At any rate, the film is smart, beautifully shot, well acted, and features one of the greatest endings in the history of noir.
Be on the lookout for Jim “Thurston Howell III” Backus as the prosecuting attorney in the film’s climactic trial sequence.
Macao
Josef Von Sternberg, visionary director and Marlene Dietrich paramour, directs this Noir-lite adventure of American misfits on the island of vice, Macau (nee Macao). The story is entirely by rote, and the twists couldn’t possibly be surprising to anyone who has ever seen a film before, but visually this film is very impressive.
It is also freakishly sexy for a film from 1952. Who better to match Mitchum than Jane Russell, a woman who has Alaskan mountains named after her bosom? (Seriously, the Jane Russell Peaks.) The 38-25-36 beauty was discovered by Hughes working as the receptionist for his dentist. Mitchum and Russell had worked together previously on His Kind of Woman (with Vincent Price), and have fantastic chemistry together here.
All in all, not a bad use of 81 minutes.
Home from the Hll
Home from the Hill is one of those long-running-time, studio prestige pictures, and a pretty good one at that. It is directed by Vincente Minnelli (AKA Liza’s dad) and based on a novel by William Humphrey. In it, Mitchum plays Captain Wade Hunnicutt, a man who reigns like a king over a small Texas town. He describes himself as a man who can walk around town with empty pockets. Everybody knows who he is, so he needs no ID. Everybody is willing to loan him what he needs, so he needs no money. Nobody would dare steal from him, so he needs no keys.
Unfortunately for Wade, there are those that would dare shoot him for his lustful, adulterous ways.
Playing Wade’s son Theron is a young George Hamilton, whose performance is as over the top as one would expect from a 20 year old in a post-James Dean melodrama. Also playing an important part the film is the charming George Peppard, Hannibal of TV’s The A-Team. Peppard is absolutely terrific here, particularly in his scenes with Mitchum.
The Sundowners
The Sundowners is the other long-running prestige picture made in 1960 by Mitchum. For this film and Home from the Hill, Mitchum won the Best Actor award from the National Board of Review. He delivers a wonderful performance here as Paddy Carmody, a peripatetic Irishman wandering around 1920s Australia. The great Deborah Kerr stars as Mitchum’s wife Ida, who longs to settle down and get a farm for the sake of their son. Rounding out the cast is the hilariously dry Peter Ustinov, who joins up with the Carmody clan to help them drive 1,200 sheep 400 miles across the outback.
The Sundowners is directed by Fred Zinneman (High Noon), a man who couldn’t make a bad movie. Jack Hildyard (The Bridge on the River Kwai) handles the cinematography and does a superlative job.
All in all, The Sundowners is well crafted flick.
The Good Guys and The Bad Guys
Every collection has its clunkers, and this one’s is Burt Kennedy’s ridiculously uneven The Good Guys and the Bad Guys. Mitchum stars as James Flagg a marshal forced into retirement just as he suspects his old nemesis, bank robber Big John McKay (George Kennedy), is planning a big heist. Eventually, Mitchum and Kennedy team up to fight off that young whippersnapper David Carradine and his band of mean bank robbers.
The film can never quite decide whether it is a straight western or whether it is It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, and thus suffers from a lack of anything resembling weight or resonance.
The Good Guys and The Bad Guys also features a randy comic relief mayor portrayed by Martin Balsam (Psycho‘s Inspector Arbogast) who is pursuing an affair with a woman named Carmel played by Tina Louise (Gilligan’s Island‘s Giger the Movie Star).
The Yakuza
Sydney Pollack (Will’s dad on Will and Grace) directs The Yakuza a superior blend of the Asian and American gangster movies of the time. Robert Mitchum (pushing 60 at the time) stars as Harry Kilmer a WWII veteran and retired detective who returns to Japan to a friend’s daughter who has been kidnapped by the eponymous Yakuza. Aiding Mitchum in his quest is the “Japanese Clint Eastwood” Takakura Ken as Ken Tanaka , a man whose honor forever puts him forever in the debt of Kilmer.
Just prior to The Yakuza, Sydney Pollack made The Way We Were. It’s almost as though Pollack were using the brutal violence and masculinity of Yakuza to apologize for the amount of suck emitted by The Way We Were. Pollack knew that he had to create a piece of art which would be able to balance out his sucks-to-rocks ratio. He had no choice but to have a movie that featured sword fights, shotguns, and limb chopping.
It had to be done.
The Collection: 8/10
The DVDs
All these films look and sound great. They are all appropriately formatted to their proper ratios (i.e. Macao is full frame, The Sundowners is matted widescreen, and Home from the Hill is in full on, decadent, letterbox).
Extras
Angel Face includes a commentary by author and historian Eddie Muller, which is one of those deals where after listening to it, you too feel like an expert on Film Noir.
Macao also features a commentary by Eddie Muller, but this time he is joined by the film’s Stanley Rubin and Jane Russell. In addition, this disc contains an episode of TCM Private Screenings with Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, hosted by Robert Osborne. It lasts about an hour and covers a lot of both of their careers.
Home from the Hill features its unrestored original theatrical trailer. It’s strange how movie trailers have changed from a four minute “book report” style to a 30 second music video format.
The disc for The Sundowners contains another vintage featurette, this one titled On Location with The Sundowners. This consists of the author of the book on which the film was based hosting a short behind-the-scenes special. We also get the original theatrical trailer.
The Good Guys and the Bad Guys has an odd little vintage featurette called The Good Guy from Chama hosted by a little kid who gets a part in the movie. This disc also contains its movies’ trailer.
The Yakuza has a commentary by director Sydney Pollack which isn’t terribly remarkable. It also contains a vintage featurette called Promises to Keep which is an entertaining enough “making of” special.
The Inside Pulse
All in all, this is a pretty good collection. For fans of Mitchum, a lot of this is essential viewing. For fans of these particular movies, the film quality and proper ratios make this collection worth the price (which is quite reasonable anyway).
