Manny Farber's best films of 1951, #3: 'His Kind of Woman," directed (sort of) by John Farrow

Parts #1 and #2: Here and here. 

Farber: “Good coarse romantic-adventure non­sense, exploit­ing the express­ive dead-pans of Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell, a young man and a young woman who would prob­ably enjoy doing in real life what they have to do here for RKO. Vincent Price is superb in his one right role—that of a ham act­or thrown sud­denly into a situ­ation call­ing for high melo­dra­mat­ic cour­age. Russell’s petu­lant, tone­less rendi­tion of ‘Five Little Miles from San Berdoo’ is high art of a sort.”

That pretty much nails it, although it says some­thing inter­est­ing about what one might call Farber’s crit­ic­al ecu­men­ism that he could deem this both “non­sense” and a “best film” of the year.  It is a thor­oughly enjoy­able pic­ture, and its enjoy­able qual­it­ies stem in no small part from its being some­thing of a mess—more non­sensic­al than your aver­age bit of stu­dio non­sense. Blame then-RKO-head Howard Hughes, whose obses­sion with his dis­cov­ery Russell com­pelled him to micro-manage the pro­duc­tion, fir­ing ori­gin­al dir­ect­or Farrow and bring­ing in RIchard Fleischer to preside over a gruel­ing series of re-shoots, dur­ing which the prin­ciple act­ors took the liberty of revis­ing their own dialogue. 

The plot setup is pure con­vo­luted hok­um, involving a Luciano-esque Italian mob­ster (Raymond Burr) rot­ting in exile who con­trives to re-enter the U.S. by assum­ing the iden­tity of drift­ing gam­bler Milner (Mitchum), who, it’s assumed, will take his multi-thousand-dollar bribe and loll around the strange Mexican resort that’s their ren­dez­vous point for a year or more. “It’s not the place, it’s the people,” resort own­er Jose Morro (a thor­oughly robot­ic Phillip Van Zandt) boasts to Milner after the pos­sible suck­er rolls in (Mitchum looks, of course, like they just peeled him out of bed, only moreso than usu­al). And for the next 40 minutes or so, HKOW is what Quentin Tarantino would call “a great hangout movie.” Not much goes on. The sleepily sen­su­ous Russell tries to pin down boy­friend Price, mag­ni­fi­cently self-obsessed until the wife Russell’s char­ac­ter did­n’t know he had shows up. Milner tries to fig­ure out where his con­tact’s at, and shows a little Rick Blaine nobil­ity by using his card-sharp chops to bene­fit a young couple about to fall into ruin at the hands of a pred­at­ory gam­bler played by Jim Backus. After Tim Holt turns up, the plot some­how feels obliged to kick into gear. And then Russell stops by Mitchum’s cab­in wear­ing one of those num­bers that makes you go “What the?” fol­lowed by (if you’re me) “hom­ina hom­ina homina…”

And then the pic­ture gets really weird; were I feel­ing high­falutin I would say it bifurc­ates. Actually, that’s almost entirely accur­ate. After Mitchum’s char­ac­ter is taken host­age by the bad guys, the pic­ture hones in on Price’s char­ac­ter, a hack and a ham and a mor­al cow­ard who, handed a gun by Russell, sees an oppor­tun­ity to do some­thing real for once. “You go back to Hollywood…while I go on to real-life triumphs…or a glor­i­ous death!” he sin­cerely charges his pul­ing wife and spine­less law­yer (or agent, or whatever—it’s hard to actu­ally tell).

And off he goes, quot­ing Shakespeare all the way. Upon being wounded, he notes, “Tis not so deep as a well, nor wide as a church door,” the almost-last-lines of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet. Even a throwaway line like “I must rid all the sea of pir­ates” turns out to be from Antony and Cleopatra. The film reaches a near-sublime note of sil­li­ness when it throws in what amounts to a silent-movie gag involving a leaky boat com­mand­eered by Price. And all the while, Mitchum’s Milner, when he’s shown at all, is com­pletely inef­fec­tu­al, a tem­por­ary plaything that Burr’s sad­ist­ic gang­ster is eager to be rid of…

It seems a bit unfair, then, that Mitchum’s char­ac­ter gets to pull off the film’s ulti­mate bit of derring-do, but them’s the rules, I guess. HKOW’s often-bizarre vari­ations on con­ven­tion could only be car­ried so far. 

By the way—two things. Among its oth­er pleas­ures the movie also fea­tures a rel­at­ively rare in-the-flesh appear­ance from voice-over legend Paul Frees; it’s always a kick to match that voice to a face. Also, our Mr. Farber was all of five months the seni­or of “young man” Mitchum at the time he wrote the above-cited piece!

UPDATE: My friend Mr. Joseph Failla has some par­tic­u­larly appos­ite notes to add:

“Even though Robert Mitchum received top billing, I always con­sidered HIS KIND OF WOMAN, first and fore­most, one of Vincent Price’s most not­able films. He dom­in­ates the pro­ceed­ings so well, you for­get the crime thrill­er you began to watch and become totally caught up with the Price char­ac­ter­’s newly found hero­ics. In fact, I’d rate his work here prac­tic­ally on a par with my favor­ite Price per­form­ance as a crit­ic­ally maligned Shakespearian act­or in THEATRE OF BLOOD. I’ve often rejec­ted the notion that Price was a ham; he’s done much to prove oth­er­wise. The prob­lem was, he may have been at his best when he was por­tray­ing one.

If I remem­ber cor­rectly, very little of the film Farrow shot remains. I believe the open­ing scene with Burr is his;  it seems to be played some­what straight­er than any of the oth­er sequences he appears in. But once the com­edy relief begins, we’re prob­ably firmly with­in Fleischer’s re-shoots. The bulk of the film even looks dif­fer­ent from the open­ing foot­age, mak­ing clear­er how extens­ive the revi­sions were. I sup­pose it should­n’t be any sur­prise that anoth­er troubled Hughes pro­duc­tion, MACAO, which also fea­tured Mitchum and Jane Russell, switched dir­ect­ors too. Officially begun by Von Sternberg, it was com­pleted by Nicholas Ray without cred­it. That alone makes view­ing a must.

But I admit, I enjoy the lengths to which HKOW is will­ing to take its B movie t
heat­rics. While oth­er films would be sat­is­fied with just rough­ing Mitchum up, this one con­tin­ues to up the ante, espe­cially dur­ing the exten­ded cli­max on the vil­lain’s boat. Heightening the sus­pense by any means neces­sary (includ­ing that silent movie gag), the movie shows us Mitchum sweat­ing and suf­fer­ing much longer than we’re used to see­ing, as he’s set upon almost end­lessly by mur­der­ous thugs and a sin­is­ter doc­tor with a deadly hypo­derm­ic needle.

Oh, if you really want a good look at Paul Frees (in col­or yet), check out JET PILOT again. He’s the Russian officer who goes for a very rough ride when he activ­ates his eject­or seat from an air­craft while still on the ground.”

“Check out Jet Pilot again.” Always good advice, sez I.