Robert Mitchum

JAMES STEWART, ROBERT MITCHUM: THE TWO FACES OF AMERICA: is “hero/anti-hero” too simplistic?

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The 2017 documentary James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America traces the mostly parallel and mostly contrasting Hollywood careers of icons James Stewart and Robert Mitchum.

Hero and anti-hero. James Stewart became perhaps American cinema’s greatest screen actor by portraying earnest, well-meaning,, play-by-the-rules types like George Bailey and Jefferson Smith. Mitchum, so identified with film noir, is known as an insolent rebel with no pretense of following anybody else’s rules. (Of course, it’s more complicated than that – among Stewart’s greatest performances are his darkest, in Hitchcock classics like Vertigo and Rear Window and in Anthony Mann’s psychological Westerns like Winchester ’73.)

James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America is not a deep dive into this optimism/cynicism theme of American postwar psychology. Instead, it’s more of a marriage of two showbiz biodocs.

That being said, fans of the actors (and I am a big fan of both) get some insights. Both actors reflect on their own work (see trailers below). The most evocative segment is about Stewart’s grief at the loss of his son, a marine killed in the Vietnam War that Jimmy himself supported politically.

Stewart and Mitchum did not socialize, despite their daughters knowing each other in high school. They only worked together once, late in their careers, in the 1978 remake of The Big Sleep. James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America highlights a remarkable coincidence in their deaths.

I watched James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America on Turner Classic Movies, where it will be replayed on June 25. It is also streaming on the subscription services WATCH TCM and DIrecTV.

DVD/Stream of the Week: HIS KIND OF WOMAN – he knows the deal is too good

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HIS KIND OF WOMAN
HIS KIND OF WOMAN

Here’s a selection from my list of Overlooked Noir – His Kind of Woman. Robert Mitchum plays a down-and-out gambler who is offered a deal that MUST be too good to be true; he’s smart enough to be suspicious and knows that he must discover the real deal before it’s too late. He meets a on-the-top-of-the-world hottie (Jane Russell), who is about to become down on her luck, too.

They are stuck in the confines of a Mexican beach resort with a full complement of shady characters, played by noir standard-carriers Charles McGraw, Jim Backus and Philip Van Zandt. And there’s the star of movie swashbucklers (Vincent Price), who is hiding out from his unhappy marriage. Tim Holt (Treasure of the Sierra Madre) shows up as another guy who isn’t what he seems. And, anchored just offshore, is the ruthless Italian crime lord (Raymond Burr at his most pitiless).

What makes this a noir classic is the complete amorality of the very sympathetic Mitchum and Russell characters. They’re not bad people, but they are playing the hands that they have been dealt. Neither questions the justice of their situations – they don’t feel sorry for themselves, they just deal with it. And they don’t worry about sleeping around or breaking a few laws if they have to. They may not be lucky, but they are determined to survive.

Reportedly, studio owner Howard Hughes fired the director John Farrow and replaced him with noir-master Richard Fleischer (Cry Danger).

His Kind of Woman plays on Turner Classic Movies and is also available on DVD from Netflix and streaming from Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.