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Archive for the ‘Robert Mitchum’ Category

Undercurrent

13 Jul

Undercurrent –­– directed by Vincente Minnelli. Turgid Melodrama. A confirmed spinster marries a handsome tycoon and finds things about him no one would want to find. 116 minutes Black and White 1946.

★★

Does the idea of Katharine Hepburn becoming the lover of Robert Mitchum seem seemly to you? Well, that’s what happens here.

Actually one must ask whether the idea of Katharine Hepburn becoming the lover of anyone seems natural. She played many spinster roles and in what you get, for the most part and with one exception, Woman Of The Year, you never sense her as a sexually attracted woman.

This is not to say she is not sexually attractive. Men are attracted to her. But what attraction is in her for any sex at all is bodied forth here in her preposterous performance opposite Robert Taylor, who certain knew his way around sex.

It’s a fascinating performance. She is moment by moment touching and completely phony, coy and actually frightened, arch and straightforwardly honest. As an actress she does not seem to have any sense at all of when she is being just terrible, just false, just fabricated, just artificial, and when she is true blue.

She is an actress first of all devoted to The Noble. And it is also probably true that she had no real attraction to males – or let us say, felt it so rarely that she could not summon it at will. So what we get is an actress pretending to love. And her means to that are to woe the audience into sympathizing with her. And the means to that are to make her characters gauche and gawky and full of lollypop sentiment and glassy-eyed idealism. So, being devoted to The Noble, she is well within her ambition to make sexual attraction seem adolescent – or her idea of adolescent – for no adolescent would carry on with such Golly-Gee gyrations and such brutal bashfulness. You cannot believe her for a minute. She is just play-acting.

She is an actress who produced herself. All actors do that. They make something up in the shower, and that is what you get. It is a true strand of their nature. But Hepburn wants something more; she wants to be fascinating to those who watch what she does, and everything she does is subordinated to that questionable ambition. Noble and Fascinating.

No wonder she was box office poison. She is so because as a show-off she is irritating.

But she is also, the next second, brilliant, unusual, and lovable. Such a curious flower not suitable for every occasion, our Kate. Our Kate with the blinders on.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Clint Sunberg, Directed by Vincente Minnelli, Edmund Gwenn, FILMED BY: Carl Freund, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Jayne Meadows, Katharine Hepburn, Marjorie Main, Robert Mitchum, Robert Taylor, TURGID MELODRAMA

 

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

08 Dec

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo – directed by Mervyn LeRoy. WWII Drama. Four months after Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Dootlittle’s B-25 squadron mounts the daring bomb attack for which the airmen know they do not have sufficient return fuel. 138 minutes Black and White 1944.
★★★★★
What you have is a script by Dalton Trumbo who hypothesizes every scene into what he ideologically wishes it to be, so the script always floats slightly above the actors’ heads. They have to reach back into their Sunday School pageants to play it. But it does give Trumbo leeway for the scene where two men discuss whether they actually hate the Japanese and what it feels like to kill civilians. It’s good the scene is there at all, since it would have been a matter of discussion among troops. So “Anti-American” though; so Dalton Trumbo; so HUAC. After all a War is on! Loose lips sink ships! As usual with Trumbo, it feels at once startling and pat. An honestly acted liberal rant.

Not to be missed are terribly acted romantic scenes of Phyllis Thaxter who grinds every scene to a halt by her sparkle; she narrows her eyes and just glimmers away. You want to slap her. It’s a wonder Van Johnson can perform opposite her at all. You look at him being convincing and crown him with a halo: that he could act opposite Phyllis Thaxter and not gnashed his teeth once.

Spencer Tracy walks through the Doolittle role with his commanding presence merely. When you see him in the cockpit of his bomber in leather flight jacket, you want to laugh, and put him back in his suburban easy chair where he belongs and never left, not once, to do a little research about how it feels being a pilot.

But he has little to do, save deliver a few gritty speeches, and the film is well worth watching for the actual bomber training of these men, at the actual airdrome they did it in, and the tiny practice runs they performed of those huge wretched bombers in preparation for taking off from the minute flight deck of the U.S.S. Hornet. So quickly after Pearl Harbor too!

And we see the actual takeoffs on that day, for it was filmed at the time. They’d been spotted by a fishing boat and had to leave many hours too soon and farther from their targets, thus reducing the return gas in their tanks. We see the actual approach to Japan. We see them see Fujiyama. We see them skim low over the paddies. We see the actual bombing raid. All of this is thrilling and valid. For we are seeing the actual footage of it

Then we see how they had to fly to a base in China, which only one of them actually made. China was Japanese occupied at the time, so when the bombers landed or crashed, their crews were either taken by the Japs or hidden by the Chinese and spirited away to secret airfields where lovely and ever-resourceful DC3s flew them off in the nick of time.

The story focuses mainly on Van Johnson’s crew, among whom we find the refreshing face of Robert Walker, a terrific actor here and elsewhere. A big team of Oriental and American actors ably acts it, including Don DeFore, Robert Mitchum, Leon Ames, Benson Fong, Hsin Kung, Ching Wah Lee, Ann Shoemaker, Stephen McNally, Bill Williams, Scott McKay, Selena Royle, Alan Napier. Most of these appear in the adventure and escape in China. Harold Rosson and the great Robert Surtees filmed it. It is action/adventure as its most documentarian and thrilling.

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Ann Shoemaker, Benson Fong, DOCUDRAMA, Don DeFore, ESCAPE DRAMA, FAMILY FILM, FILMED BY: Robert Surtees, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Leon Ames, MAGNIFICENT FEAT DRAMA, MILITARY, Phyllis Thaxter, Robert Mitchum, Robert Walker, Selena Royle, Spencer Tracy, Stephen McNally, Van Johnson, War Story, World War II

 

El Dorado

29 Oct

El Dorado – Directed and  Produced by Howard Hawks. Western. A quartet of gunfighters duels with the hired guns of a land baron out to rob a farmer’s water rights.  126 minutes Color 1967.

* * *

Hawks made four westerns with John Wayne, of which this is the third; it is also the next to last film Hawks made, and it copy-cats, embarrassingly, the two that surround it. The movie dawdles along rather existentially from episode to episode like a local that stops at every cow, but this provides part of its entertainment value. It might have been better directed by George Marshall (Destry Rides Again), but the real problem with the picture is in the casting. The film is a by-blow of Rio Bravo, the first film of the last three, and we have Arthur Hunnicutt in the Walter Brennan part and Robert Mitchum in the Dean Martin part. Hunnicutt does an honorable job but he cannot supply the deficiency of the brilliant Brennan, and Robert Mitchum as the drunken sheriff is a dead loss in the Martin role. Mitchum can’t act and never could, really. His self-possession is a pose. And he does not have a funny bone in his body, at least as an actor. Dean Martin was a warm and richly humorous man and along with Walter Brennan brought the natural humanity necessary to make Rio Bravo work to make it one of the classic maverick westerns. Here, however, we have the same set-up as Rio Bravo, with James Caan, a Hawks’ discovery, filling in the foursome for Ricky Nelson. Caan with his broad square shoulders looks terrific in his costumes, and you believe he can throw knives – thwack– like that – and handle cards at a gambler’s table. He’s just fine. He’s young and lush and virginal and a good mosquito to pester big man John Wayne. Wayne is just marvelous in the picture. He carefully listens to the other actors and his responses are always on the money. He has a habit of subtly shifting and swaying, which keeps him or a scene from going static. And he has a rich and humane humor. And what a presence! Of course, he never could kiss a woman worth a hoot, but the women in Hawks’ films at this time are pallid or perfunctory. Hawks’ sets were relaxed and cooperative, which gives his films a permissiveness which sometimes lapses into slumber. With the help of the entire crew, Hawks tended to rewrite his scripts every day, so, while he worked best with huge stars, they also had to be, like John Wayne, quick studies. Hawks had made Wayne a serious actor in Red River (John Ford never knew Wayne could act at all until then), so Wayne would accept Hawks’ hiring him with no script at all, as in Hatari; Wayne sat around and played chess. Leigh Brackett again contorted herself to write the screenplay, and Arthur Rosson, of Hawks’ silent film days, filmed it richly. The costumes by Edith Head encourage a willing suspension of belief, however, and the music would be ideal for a Peter Sellers’ comedy – but then, the film is an entertainment pure and simple, closer to a slowmotion Roadrunner cartoon than not, and satisfying on that level, if that level satisfies you. The value is the value of a superstar with all the merit in display that made him one.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Arthur Hunnicutt, Directed by Howard Hawks, James Caan, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, WESTERN

 

Midway

02 Jun

Midway – Directed by Jack Smight – WW II War Action. Vast armadas clash at sea in a turning point battle in 1942. 132 minutes Color 1976.

* * * *

All the male stars, and there are many, make grim faces, and so they all look alike. The only one to whom a grim face comes naturally is the great Toshiro Mifune, but when he opens that face to speak, what few lines he has are dubbed. Anxious, fearful, watchful – the others are all the same: Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Cliff Robertson, Robert Wagner, Robert Webber, Edward Albert, and, of course, the star, Mister Grim Mouth himself, Charlton Heston. This tends to level the playing field, or rather it makes it possible for certain actors to rise above the monotony of the waters and shine: James Shigeta, for instance, in radiator paint grey hair, who makes a telling character of the wise Admiral who sank the US fleet at Pearl Harbor now attempting to seize Midway Island which has become a US airbase for the bombing of Tokyo. It is a beautiful performance, perfectly calibrated to suit the ravages of fate, as the huge Japanese Navy, spearheaded by four carriers, sets out for the invasion. And Hal Holbrook, who makes a merry wag of the decoder who tracked down the target of the Japanese mission, which no one knew until the day before. Chance, dumb luck, craft, skill, experience, ineptitude, and ruthlessness on all sides come into play in this story which is a pretty good civics lesson overview of the personalities, strategies, and odds at play. The Japanese had a huge advantage, for the US Pacific Fleet had been generously destroyed by them at Pearl Harbor. The director and writer have endeavored to show these forces honestly and fairly, and we are never in doubt as to the names of the specific pilots on the specific missions which failed or succeeded. Oddly this keeps things impersonal, since we never get to know any of these characters well. But it does keep us informed as to the doings of the battle, and the chances of choice or of weather, for instance, which played such a notable part in the outcome. For huge vessels in fleets wallow around upon the fabric of a vast sluggish ocean trying to destroy one another, and doing so. All this manipulated by Admiral Nimitz in Hawaii. And Admiral Yamamoto on his battleship 300 miles away. Lots of color footage of the battle lend their flare to the story, and while the human relations are clunky, the relation to the personalities at play on the circumstances and events is influential beyond measure. It’s a worthwhile movie, highly dramatic, and clear, and necessary to know.[ad#300×250]

 

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, ACTION ADVENTURE, Charlton Heston, Cliff Robertson, Edward Albert, Glenn Ford, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Robert Mitchum, Robert Wagner, Robert Webber, World War II

 

The Big Sleep

24 Oct

The Big Sleep – directed by Michael Winner – “noir” remake of a detective investigating a blackmail case. –– 102 minutes color 1878.

* *

Mitchum carries himself well through this poorly directed piece, a redo of the Bogart-Bacall. Oliver Reed appears, as does John Mills, Richard Todd, and Colin Blakely. For the money, dear, for the money. Sara Miles is sexier than anyone has a right to be. Joan Collins keeps her dignity, if you can imagine such a thing. But poor Richard Boone is off his mark, and even that past master Jimmy Stewart seems uncertain of his bearings, as which of us would not be, staggering through this ghost of a classic. Amusing palaces.  Made in the dear druggy days of Great Britain.

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Posted in DRAMA, FOREIGN LANDS, Jimmy Stewart: Screen God: Acting God, Joan Collins, John Mills, MURDER, MYSTERY, NOIR, Oliver Reed, Robert Mitchum

 
 
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