Robert Mitchum – All Good Movies

Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, and Robert Mitchum were born within a few years of each other and found great success in Hollywood in the decades immediately after World War II. They were often cast in similar roles: If you see an American movie from that period featuring a tough as nails cop or PI, a brawny cowboy slugging it out in a saloon, or a strong-jawed soldier saving his platoon or battleship, one or more of them was probably on screen. But by the end of the 1960s when they were all in late middle age, Mitchum had fewer films that would be remembered as classics (Out of the Past and Night of the Hunter being the strongest candidates) to his credit than did his contemporaries, perhaps because he never took his job that seriously (He famously noted that acting can’t be that hard given that Hollywood’s biggest star in its early days was a dog). With a few exceptions, Mitchum’s work in the 1940s-1960s was overall simply not at the level of Douglas or Lancaster (or for that matter Peck or Wayne).

But as he got old, Mitchum got more interesting. His tired eyes began to match the shambling body that carried them, his air of disinterest became more melancholy than insolent. Mitchum’s world-weary Phillip Marlowe in Farewell, My Lovely (my recommendation here) is one of my favorite performances of the mid-1970s, and I would argue that he reached his greatest height just before that in the 1973 movie The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

The plot of the film closely follows the novel by George V. Higgins, who as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston knew the terrain he was describing. Under grey Beantown skies, a gang is pulling off a string of bank robberies using handguns supplied by minor league criminal Eddie Coyle (Mitchum). Coyle purchases the weapons from a better-connected gunrunner (Steven Keats) who also traffics in machine guns. Because Coyle is facing a sentencing hearing for smuggling a truckload of whiskey for his shady bartender (Peter Boyle), he is tempted to give information about the machine guns to an ATF agent (Richard Jordan) in the hopes of a lighter sentence. Coyle doesn’t want to go to prison again at his age, for his own sake and for that of his wife and kids, but he also doesn’t want to be a rat nor accept the risk of harsh punishment if the mob finds out he dropped a dime.

Director Peter Yates follows the compelling formula he established in my recommendations Robbery and Bullitt, namely one exciting scene with cars (in this case an inventive chase in a parking lot) and a lot of low-key atmosphere and acting everywhere else. Sporting a haircut and clothing that looks like it ran him a ten spot all in, Mitchum quietly commands the screen without a whiff of movie star about him. Eddie Coyle is not a particularly good man, but he some sense of duty to his friends and family, and Mitchum makes the audience care about him, defects and all, not least by portraying more vulnerability than toughness.

The supporting cast members all give excellent naturalistic performances that make a life of crime look gritty, unglamorous and even a bit tedious. Combined with ideal use of Boston locations, the movie at times takes on the tone of a docudrama about real world cops and robbers. It’s superb slice of life cinema anchored by the best work of Mitchum’s career.

p.s. This movie lost money but has become a cult favorite among film buffs. I assume Quentin Tarantino is one of them given that Steven Keats’ character is named Jackie Brown.

A film critic once wrote of one of my recommendations, the 1998 retro-noir Twilight, that you might have to be over 35 to really enjoy it. That may also be true of this week’s film recommendation, a reverent revival of detective noir starring an old hand at the genre: 1975’s Farewell, My Lovely.

The plot is from a Raymond Chandler novel, so in some sense there is no point in explaining it because his books are more about language and character than storyline (indeed, it didn’t even bother him to realize that he himself didn’t know who committed one of the murders in The Big Sleep). But anyway, private eye Phillip Marlowe is hired by Moose Malloy, a mountain of a man with rice pudding for brains (ex-heavyweight boxer Jack O’Halloran, perfectly cast in his acting debut). Moose lost track of his girlfriend Velma after he went to prison, and now that he is out he wants Marlowe’s help in tracking her down. But every time Marlowe starts to get close to locating her, there is a violent backlash against him, Moose or both. Powerful forces clearly don’t want Velma found, but who are they and what is their motive?

The most famous and lionized adaptation of Chandler’s novel was made in 1944 under the name Murder, My Sweet, with Dick Powell as Marlowe. I have written about how I never quite bought Powell’s transformation from pre-war light comedy/song and dance man to noir tough guy (His contemporary John Payne was more successful). In contrast, the star of the 1975 version, Robert Mitchum, was born for this kind of stuff.

As a world-weary, cynical, Phillip Marlowe, Mitchum carries the 1975 adaptation end to end with aplomb. Many movie tough guys tried to play the invulnerable hero in their autumn years and looked a bit silly or even embarrassing. Mitchum, in his mid-50s, is playing a guy in his mid-50s and he’s just not that tough anymore. Indeed, in this movie, he takes way more physical punishment from the bad guys than he can dish out.

Sylvia Miles received a supporting actress Oscar nomination for solid work here as a boozy floozy, but it just as well might have gone to little known Kate Murtagh for her ferocious performance as a tough-as-nails madam. It’s also fun to see John Ireland, so often the bad guy in the heyday of noir (see for example my recommendation of Railroaded!), playing the “one honest cop” role here. Charlotte Rampling makes a sultry, Bacall-esque femme fatale whose hair is the color of gold in old paintings and who gives a man a smile that he can feel in his pocket (Added fun for noir fans: her screen entrance mirrors Barbara Stanwyck’s in Double Indemnity). Also look fast for a young Sylvester Stallone in a small part.

Director Dick Richards really took a chance in making this old story in the 1970s with no condescension or trendy upgrades. The whole look of the film is a throwback, particularly the almost Sepia Tone color scheme created by the set and costume designers and cinematographer John Alonzo (who also shot Chinatown). If this had been shot in black and white, it could have been released to praise in the 1940s or 1950s. Some critics found that tiresome and affected, but for me this retelling of the classic story is as honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where it’s going out of style.