Top 10 Film Lists
  • Home
  • Top 10 Lists
    • My Top 10 Favorite Movies
    • Top 10 Heist Movies
    • Top 10 Neo-Noir Films
    • The Top 10 Films of the Troubles (1969-1998) >
      • The Troubles Selected Timeline
    • Top 10 Films from 2001
    • Director Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Film Noir Directors
      • Top 10 Coen Brothers Films
      • Top 10 John Ford Films
      • Top 10 Samuel Fuller Films
      • Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films
      • Top 10 John Huston Films
      • Top 10 Fritz Lang Films (American)
      • Val Lewton Top 10
      • Top 10 Ernst Lubitsch Films
      • Top 10 Jean-Pierre Melville Films
      • Top 10 Nicholas Ray Films
      • Top 10 Preston Sturges Films
      • Top 10 Robert Siodmak Films
      • Top 10 William Wellman Films
      • Top 10 Billy Wilder Films
    • Actor/Actress Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Joan Blondell Movies
      • Top 10 Clark Gable Movies
      • Top 10 Ava Gardner Films
      • Top 10 Gloria Grahame Films
      • Top 10 Jean Harlow Movies
      • Top 10 Miriam Hopkins Films
      • Top 10 Grace Kelly Films
      • Top 10 Burt Lancaster Films
      • Top 10 Carole Lombard Movies
      • Top 10 Myrna Loy Films
      • Top 10 Marilyn Monroe Films
      • Top 10 Robert Mitchum Noir Movies
      • Top 10 Paul Newman Films
      • Top 10 Robert Ryan Movies
      • Top 10 Norma Shearer Movies
      • Top 10 Barbara Stanwyck Films
    • Top 10 Noir Films (Classic Era)
    • Top 10 Pre-Code Films
    • Top 10 Actresses of the 1930's
  • Reviews
    • Quick Hits: Short Takes on Recent Viewing >
      • Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache
      • Elevator to the Gallows ('58)
      • Days of Heaven
      • Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
      • Incindies (2010)
      • In the Mood For Love (2000)
      • Last Picture Show Teaser Intro
      • Le Silence De La Mer ('49)
      • The Princess Bride ('87) Intro
      • Pulp Fiction ('94) Intro
    • The 1910's >
      • The Lubitsch German Silents
    • The 1920's >
      • Wild Orchids ('29)
    • The 1930's >
      • Becky Sharp (1935)
      • Blonde Crazy
      • Bombshell ('33)
      • The Cheat
      • The Conquerors
      • The Crowd Roars
      • The Divorcee
      • Frank Capra & Barbara Stanwyck: The Evolution of a Romance
      • Heroes for Sale
      • The Invisible Man (1933)
      • L'Atalante (1934)
      • Let Us Be Gay
      • My Man Godfrey
      • No Man of Her Own (1932)
      • Platinum Blonde ('31)
      • Reckless ('35)
      • The Sign of the Cross (1932)
      • The Sin of Nora Moran (1932)
      • True Confession ('37)
      • Virtue ('32)
      • The Women
    • The 1940's >
      • Casablanca (1942)
      • The Story of Citizen Kane
      • Criss Cross (1949)
      • Double indemnity
      • Jean Arthur in A Foreign Affair
      • The Killers 1946 & 1964 Comparison
      • The Maltese Falcon Intro
      • Moonrise (1948)
      • My Gal Sal (1942)
      • Nightmare Alley
      • Notorious Intro ('46)
      • Overlooked Christmas Movies of the 1940's
      • Pursued (1947)
      • Remember the Night ('40)
      • The Red Shoes (1948)
      • The Set-Up ('49)
      • The Third Man
    • The 1950's >
      • The Asphalt Jungle Secret Cinema Intro
      • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ('58) Intro
      • The Crimson Kimono (1959)
      • A Face in the Crowd (1957)
      • In a Lonely Place
      • Mogambo ('53)
      • Niagara (1953)
      • The Night of The Hunter ('55)
      • Pushover Noir City
      • Rear Window (1954)
      • Red Dust ('32 vs Mogambo ('53)
      • The Searchers ('56)
      • Singin' in the Rain Introduction
      • Some Like It Hot ('59) >
        • Some Like it Hot Intro (Beyond the Bay)
    • The 1960's >
      • The April Fools (1969)
      • Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
      • Cape Fear ('62)
      • Cool Hand Luke (1967) Intro
      • Dr Strangelove Intro
      • The Hustler ('61) Intro
      • The Misfits ('61)
      • The Umbrellas of Cherbourg/La La Land
    • The 1970's >
      • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
      • American Graffiti Introduction
      • Chinatown Introduction
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle ('73)
      • Jaws Intro
    • The 1980's >
      • Blood Simple ('84)
      • A Christmas Story Intro
    • The 1990's >
      • The General (1998)
    • 2000's >
      • Belfast (2021)
      • Hunger (2008)
      • Mank (2020)
      • No Man's Land (2001)
      • Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
      • Wall-E
      • Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
      • The Top 10 Films I watched in 2020
  • Artists
    • Actors/Actresses >
      • Joan Blondell
      • Faye Dunaway: 1967-1976
      • The Noir Villainy of Dan Duryea
      • Clark Gable Bio
      • Jean Harlow Bio
      • Veronica Lake
      • Norma Shearer
    • Directors/Producers/Cinematographers >
      • Founders Series: Alice Guy-Blache
      • John Alton
      • Hitchcock & Cary Grant
      • William Wellman
    • Books >
      • Book Reviews >
        • Book Review: Clark Gable by D. Bret
      • Pre-Code
      • Actor Bios
      • Film Noir
      • Director Bios
      • Studio Head Bios
      • Hollywood History
    • Studio
  • Resources
    • NOTES >
      • American Graffiti Notes
      • Anatomy of a Murder Notes
      • The Asphalt Jungle Outline
      • Breakfast Club Notes
      • Citizen Kane Notes
      • It's A Wonderful Life Notes
      • Singin' in the Rain Notes
    • CMBA Interview/Profile
    • Bay Cinema Society Press
    • Hollywood History >
      • Production Code
      • Film Noir
  • Video Introductions
    • Video Introductions
  • Last Picture Show Notes

Top 10 Robert Mitchum Noir Movies

Top 10 Robert Mitchum Noir Movies

9/8/2017

0 Comments

 
  1. Out of the Past ('47)
  2. Night of the Hunter ('55)
  3. Angel Face ('53)
  4. Cape Fear ('62)
  5. Pursued ('47)
  6. The Racket ('51)
  7. Where Danger Lives ('50)
  8. His Kind of Woman ('51)
  9. Farewell My Lovely ('75)
  10. Crossfire​ ('47)
Reviews:
Pursued ('47)
The Night of the hunter ('55)
Cape Fear ('62)
Picture
The Rationale:  

​If anyone personified the Film Noir ethos it was Robert Mitchum.  From his generally accepted "i don't give a shit" attitude to his sleepy eyes and laconic communication style, Mitchum embodied 'cool' before anyone had even fully defined it.  His rough upbringing, riding the rails as a 14 year old runaway, instilled in him a perpetual wanderlust that reflected itself in the charismatic loners that he so often played.  It also instilled in him a fatalism that so perfectly lent itself to his iconic Film Noir characters in films like Out of the Past, Angel Face & Where Danger Lives.  Picking just 10 Noir films that feature or star Mitchum is no easy task, but the best of the bunch stands head & shoulders above the rest.  His portrayal of Jeff Bailey in Out of the Past (Tourneur) is classic Mitchum, talking just enough to get a point across but nothing more. The film itself is an archetypal example of all things Noir:  lightness being overwhelmed by darkness (literally & figuratively), the past dictating the destructive present, the manipulative femme fatale, & finally the resignation of the hero to accept what fate, happenstance and his actions have dealt him.  Even the flashback structure of the film is pure Noir, revealing Bailey's past mistakes as harbingers of what will inevitably befall him in the 3rd act.  Director Jacques Tourneur & cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca create an atmospheric reality that shifts seamlessly between Bailey's narration of the past and the inevitable present.
I'll group The Night of the Hunter (Laughton) & Cape Fear (Thompson) together only because Mitchum plays 2 characters that are relentless in their pursuit & both cause destruction, injury & death along the way. Powell, in Night of the Hunter is verbose, manipulative & driven by greed, while Max Cady, in Cape Fear, is emotionless, but smart & filled with rage.  Both characters drive the respective plots with willful determination and capture what made Mitchum such a powerful movie star and a brilliant actor.  His physical dominance is on display in both performances as he towers over those around him, both literally and figuratively.  His performances demand that the viewer give the characters full attention and creates a sense of awe in the totality of their evil.  What shapes these characters, however, is not just their evil, but the benevolent charm that runs beneath both performances. Perhaps Mitchum alone could have created these 2 characters with his blend of rugged good looks and laid back style.
Angel Face (Preminger) is an interesting movie all the way around.  Jean Simmons plays classic femme fatale Diane Tremayne with an interesting twist, she is full on crazy.  Unfortunately that doesn’t stop Mitchum’s Frank Jessup from falling under her spell, becoming completely manipulated by her & even putting his life at risk in her hands. Their first encounter sets the tone for the entire relationship, in fact, when Jessup slaps her to end a hysterical fit only to have her slap him right back.  That masochistic undercurrent plays itself out throughout the entire movie, with several twisted relationships layered into Simmons’ Tremayne family tree for good measure.  Otto Preminger, one of Noir’s finest craftsmen, adds wonderful touches, like Simmons’ dead eyed piano playing as her step mother lies dying upstairs & the sexual innuendo of Frank’s girlfriend Mary, assuming he has slept with Diane, say “I bet you’re tired”, slipping one past the censors.
The Racket is a different kind of performance from Mitchum, in that he plays righteous police captain Tom MgQuigg, not above banging some heads to get justice, but the only uncorrupt man in town. Mitchum plays McQuigg as a stone faced avenging angel, an outsider, but his portrayal belies Mitchum’s disdain for the twisted authority McQuigg represents.  Robert Ryan plays the mobster Nick Scanlon as a classic gangster/boss, courtesy of screenwriter WR Burnett (Little Caesar ’31, High Sierra ’41), one of the inventors of the gangster genre.
Besides both being classified as Noir, Where Danger Lives (Farrow) & His Kind of Woman (Farrow) have little in common other than the same director, John Farrow (The Big Clock), & that both were released within months of each other.  While Where Danger Lives is a more fatalistic and a purely dark piece, the main characters meet after a suicide attempt, His Kind of Woman has some sly wit & slapstick mixed with the normal Mitchum cool detachment.  Between the two I prefer Where Danger Lives because of its dark tones & the last third of His Kind of Woman suffers from “Howard Hughes-it is” in that he reworked the climax more than year after original shooting was complete, adding he Raymond Burr character altogether.  Both Faith Domergue, in Where Danger Lives, & Jane Russell, in His Kind of Woman, are wonderfully cast opposite Mitchum, but play very different femme fatales.
Crossfire is a fantastic film, but Mitchum plays a supporting role, so I have moved it further down the list.  In Crossfire, a terrific morality story about Anti-Semitism, Mitchum is the wise voice of reason, playing Sergeant Keely, whose investigation helps to clear his friend of murder.  Robert Ryan is brilliant as the troubled Montogomery, while the remaining cast, including Gloria Grahame, Robert Young & Steve Brodie are fantastic. 
Mitchum defined Noir & in a certain sense Noir helped define Mitchum.  His public persona was and still is indelibly linked to his Noir characters and so much of the Noir ethos that was identified by the French in the mid-fifties reflects Mitchum’s attitude towards life:   Sometimes fatalistic, often dangerous, rarely purely romantic, but always cool.

​
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Write something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview.

    Archives

    September 2017

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Top 10 Lists
    • My Top 10 Favorite Movies
    • Top 10 Heist Movies
    • Top 10 Neo-Noir Films
    • The Top 10 Films of the Troubles (1969-1998) >
      • The Troubles Selected Timeline
    • Top 10 Films from 2001
    • Director Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Film Noir Directors
      • Top 10 Coen Brothers Films
      • Top 10 John Ford Films
      • Top 10 Samuel Fuller Films
      • Top 10 Alfred Hitchcock Films
      • Top 10 John Huston Films
      • Top 10 Fritz Lang Films (American)
      • Val Lewton Top 10
      • Top 10 Ernst Lubitsch Films
      • Top 10 Jean-Pierre Melville Films
      • Top 10 Nicholas Ray Films
      • Top 10 Preston Sturges Films
      • Top 10 Robert Siodmak Films
      • Top 10 William Wellman Films
      • Top 10 Billy Wilder Films
    • Actor/Actress Top 10's >
      • Top 10 Joan Blondell Movies
      • Top 10 Clark Gable Movies
      • Top 10 Ava Gardner Films
      • Top 10 Gloria Grahame Films
      • Top 10 Jean Harlow Movies
      • Top 10 Miriam Hopkins Films
      • Top 10 Grace Kelly Films
      • Top 10 Burt Lancaster Films
      • Top 10 Carole Lombard Movies
      • Top 10 Myrna Loy Films
      • Top 10 Marilyn Monroe Films
      • Top 10 Robert Mitchum Noir Movies
      • Top 10 Paul Newman Films
      • Top 10 Robert Ryan Movies
      • Top 10 Norma Shearer Movies
      • Top 10 Barbara Stanwyck Films
    • Top 10 Noir Films (Classic Era)
    • Top 10 Pre-Code Films
    • Top 10 Actresses of the 1930's
  • Reviews
    • Quick Hits: Short Takes on Recent Viewing >
      • Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache
      • Elevator to the Gallows ('58)
      • Days of Heaven
      • Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
      • Incindies (2010)
      • In the Mood For Love (2000)
      • Last Picture Show Teaser Intro
      • Le Silence De La Mer ('49)
      • The Princess Bride ('87) Intro
      • Pulp Fiction ('94) Intro
    • The 1910's >
      • The Lubitsch German Silents
    • The 1920's >
      • Wild Orchids ('29)
    • The 1930's >
      • Becky Sharp (1935)
      • Blonde Crazy
      • Bombshell ('33)
      • The Cheat
      • The Conquerors
      • The Crowd Roars
      • The Divorcee
      • Frank Capra & Barbara Stanwyck: The Evolution of a Romance
      • Heroes for Sale
      • The Invisible Man (1933)
      • L'Atalante (1934)
      • Let Us Be Gay
      • My Man Godfrey
      • No Man of Her Own (1932)
      • Platinum Blonde ('31)
      • Reckless ('35)
      • The Sign of the Cross (1932)
      • The Sin of Nora Moran (1932)
      • True Confession ('37)
      • Virtue ('32)
      • The Women
    • The 1940's >
      • Casablanca (1942)
      • The Story of Citizen Kane
      • Criss Cross (1949)
      • Double indemnity
      • Jean Arthur in A Foreign Affair
      • The Killers 1946 & 1964 Comparison
      • The Maltese Falcon Intro
      • Moonrise (1948)
      • My Gal Sal (1942)
      • Nightmare Alley
      • Notorious Intro ('46)
      • Overlooked Christmas Movies of the 1940's
      • Pursued (1947)
      • Remember the Night ('40)
      • The Red Shoes (1948)
      • The Set-Up ('49)
      • The Third Man
    • The 1950's >
      • The Asphalt Jungle Secret Cinema Intro
      • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ('58) Intro
      • The Crimson Kimono (1959)
      • A Face in the Crowd (1957)
      • In a Lonely Place
      • Mogambo ('53)
      • Niagara (1953)
      • The Night of The Hunter ('55)
      • Pushover Noir City
      • Rear Window (1954)
      • Red Dust ('32 vs Mogambo ('53)
      • The Searchers ('56)
      • Singin' in the Rain Introduction
      • Some Like It Hot ('59) >
        • Some Like it Hot Intro (Beyond the Bay)
    • The 1960's >
      • The April Fools (1969)
      • Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
      • Cape Fear ('62)
      • Cool Hand Luke (1967) Intro
      • Dr Strangelove Intro
      • The Hustler ('61) Intro
      • The Misfits ('61)
      • The Umbrellas of Cherbourg/La La Land
    • The 1970's >
      • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970)
      • American Graffiti Introduction
      • Chinatown Introduction
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle ('73)
      • Jaws Intro
    • The 1980's >
      • Blood Simple ('84)
      • A Christmas Story Intro
    • The 1990's >
      • The General (1998)
    • 2000's >
      • Belfast (2021)
      • Hunger (2008)
      • Mank (2020)
      • No Man's Land (2001)
      • Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
      • Wall-E
      • Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)
      • The Top 10 Films I watched in 2020
  • Artists
    • Actors/Actresses >
      • Joan Blondell
      • Faye Dunaway: 1967-1976
      • The Noir Villainy of Dan Duryea
      • Clark Gable Bio
      • Jean Harlow Bio
      • Veronica Lake
      • Norma Shearer
    • Directors/Producers/Cinematographers >
      • Founders Series: Alice Guy-Blache
      • John Alton
      • Hitchcock & Cary Grant
      • William Wellman
    • Books >
      • Book Reviews >
        • Book Review: Clark Gable by D. Bret
      • Pre-Code
      • Actor Bios
      • Film Noir
      • Director Bios
      • Studio Head Bios
      • Hollywood History
    • Studio
  • Resources
    • NOTES >
      • American Graffiti Notes
      • Anatomy of a Murder Notes
      • The Asphalt Jungle Outline
      • Breakfast Club Notes
      • Citizen Kane Notes
      • It's A Wonderful Life Notes
      • Singin' in the Rain Notes
    • CMBA Interview/Profile
    • Bay Cinema Society Press
    • Hollywood History >
      • Production Code
      • Film Noir
  • Video Introductions
    • Video Introductions
  • Last Picture Show Notes