Robert Mitchum C/D, S/D

"Mitchum is always playing a presence, a moral creature, incarcerated by the text, and when it works, he burns a hole in the screen, invests the vacant platitudes of professional screenwriting with something dark and strange, simply because he is not playing by the rules: he is obeying the rules, of course, as any convict must. He is hitting his marks, making the moves and saying the words, but he is not acting by the the rules, not deriving the subtext from the text."

After all, every one of these threads devoted to an oldtime actor usually has another actor pop up on them trying to steal the limelight, even the RIP ones.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v24/n02/cart01_.html
I recently finally got to see Thunder Road. I can't seen to get hold of The Yakuza in the UK.. anyone got any ideas?

I like OOTP fine, but even after seeing it a few times, I have trouble getting completey absorbed in it- it is a little too long, elaborate, understated, laid back and abstract in a way, it is almost a mannerist take on noir. I actually prefer the other Mitchum/Greer teamup, The Big Steal- it's zips along at a fast pace, has got a great cast, and has some great stuff about Mexico.

http://www.movingimage.us/site/screenings/mainpage/critics.html

And has no one mentioned The Friends of Eddie Coyle?

http://www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/dvd_review.asp?ID=1078

Haha, I already own "Macao" twice!

Macao is up there with His Kind Of Woman for Quality Mitchum performance in a crazy film.

Ryan's Daughter is a very atypical Mitchum performance - he's good in it.. I wouldn't vouch for the rest of the film though

:(

How wasted is Mitchum in this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-YE76CfA_E

Finally got a hold of the Lee Server bio. It's very good, lots of good anecdotes that seem like scenes from Mitchum movies.

^^^ Robert Mitchum on the Dick Cavett show. It's in seven parts but well worth the viewing, he's in pretty great form. Drinking stories, stuff about the pot bust, his early life (chain gang, early jobs), and some stuff on acting that's slightly less one-sided than his soundbytes on the topic usually feel.

I'm ashamed to be caught reading the AICN forums, but this story was worthy of reposting...

a story that Burt Reynolds told once on DINNER FOR FIVE: Robert Mitchum was a classic Hollywood tough guy, and because of that, he ended up running into a lot of people who wanted to fight him. Not because they didn't like him, but because he had that aura, that label, and they wanted to be able to tell their friends, "I went toe-to-toe with Mitchum." So one night, Mitchum and Reynolds and a couple of other people were at a bar, and a guy came up to Mitchum and just kept giving him shit, egging him on. Reynolds said that Mitchum kept his cool and kept telling the guy that he had no interest in fighting. The guy kept pressing and pressing and pressing finally bellied up against Mitchum, who was right at the bar. Without looking over, Mitchum grabbed the guy by the hair on the back of his head, slammed his face down on the bar, and just stood there while the dude crumpled to the ground unconscious. Then, Mitchum looked at the bartender and said, calmly, "Hey buddy? This guy fell and hurt himself."

'What makes a woman good in bed?'
'Proximity'

Criterion releases The Friends of Eddie Coyle in May!

http://www.criterion.com/films/1426

Coyle out tomorrow; booklet has a rather astounding 1973 Rolling Stone profile of Bob on the set.

Read this on 'Shadowplay' about Mitchum.

“On 'The RKO Story' there’s a teriffic anecdote from Robert Mitchum about the shooting of ['Angel Face']. There was a scene where he was required to slap Jean Simmons. Otto kept asking for take after take, and Mitchum quickly surmised that Otto liked to watch Jean getting slapped. So he turned the tables and slapped Otto. There were no further retakes.”

Still haven't jumped on the Eddie Coyle bandwagon.

I had forgotten that he does the Boston accent in it; only slips a couple times, to my ears. They changed the pivotal snitch from the book, tho.

Steven Keats is really good (his film debut) as a gunrunner named Jackie Brown (obv Tarantino a fan).

i forgot how many great movies he is in.

"i like thye part in "out of the past" where douglas asks if mitchum wants a smoke, and mitchum holds up his lit cigarette and says, "smoking.""

-- this is still one of the great lines ever.

watched Out of the Past last week, as i'm stumbling through a Noir phase, terrific movie.

Read this on 'Shadowplay' about Mitchum.

“On 'The RKO Story' there’s a teriffic anecdote from Robert Mitchum about the shooting of ['Angel Face']. There was a scene where he was required to slap Jean Simmons. Otto kept asking for take after take, and Mitchum quickly surmised that Otto liked to watch Jean getting slapped. So he turned the tables and slapped Otto. There were no further retakes.”

― James Morrison, Monday, May 18, 2009 Bookmark

They showed the RKO story about two months ago on BBC Four. Jean was also interviewed about it. Otto was a bloody creep.

Mitchum was one of the more fascinating interviewees (one of quite a few actually, really interesting to see former stars of stage and screen being interviewed about things they did when they had nothing in particular to promote). Very amusing when he was asked about 'auteurs' and the like. Didn't sound like he gave a shit about anything AT ALL. A biog and box set might need to set me straight one of these day.

I thought this was revived at first because Channel Four had been running one Mitchum film a day this week. Taped one Western from '47 which I'll see over the bank Holiday.

And, as am says, lots of great movies -- happened to catch a screening of Where Danger Lives, a noir type with Mitchum having it act as semi-conscious for much of it

last night I saw Wellman's Track of the Cat, which Bob isn't in all that much after the first half hour, playing a nasty eldest brother on a ranch. Really weird Western fsmily melodrama, with a menacing offscreen jaguar but mostly a lotta neo-Steinbeck/O'Neill sturm und drang, and a big part for Beulah Bondi as the grim prayerful matriarch.