Product Description Robert Mitchum: Signature Collection, The (DVD)]]> .com Big bad Bob Mitchum: Seriously, is there anybody you'd rather watch in a movie? Mitchum had the cool looks, a dancer's sense of balance, and a thoroughly modern amusement about his own stardom. Somehow he made you invest in a movie, while simultaneously communicating his own smirky suspicions that the whole thing was a joke. Mitchum gets boxed in Robert Mitchum: The Signature Collection, a six-disc batch of random but rewarding Mitchum vehicles. Highlights are two noirish outings, and two prestigious auteur pictures that allowed Mitchum to play outside his usual job description. The one authentic noir is Otto Preminger's Angel Face (1952), with Mitchum as an incredibly passive hero bewitched by Jean Simmons' spoiled rich girl. True to its title, the film is utterly deadpan in tracking the downfall of Mitchum's easily-seduced male. The quasi-noir is Macao (1952), a compulsively enjoyable piece of nonsense produced by the ever-meddling Howard Hughes. It's credited to director Josef von Sternberg, but it was largely reshot by Nicholas Ray (according to a Mitchum-Russell interview included on the disc, Mitchum wrote some of the new scenes). Doesn't matter; the combo of Mitchum and Jane Russell (re-teamed from the even kookier His Kind of Woman) is enough to carry this slice of backlot exotica. Both actors look skeptical about the material and amused by each other, and Russell gets to sing "One for My Baby." Home from the Hill (1959) is an underappreciated change of pace for both Mitchum and director Vincente Minnelli. Mitchum, all authority as the super-manly patriarch of an East Texas family, supplies the brawn; Minnelli brings the same sensitivity to the emotional effects of color and movement that he brought to his musicals. Biggest surprise here is that two young-cub Georges, Peppard and Hamilton, are both very good in the male-ingénue roles. Another long film, Fred Zinnemann's The Sundowners (1960), is a gentle and wise account of a nomadic family of sheep-herders in Australia. Mitchum and Deborah Kerr bring a beautiful sense of mature romance to their relationship, and Zinnemann catches the beauty of the country. Plus, you learn how to shear a sheep. The clinker in the set is Burt Kennedy's The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, a 1969 Western that can't decide whether it's sending up High Noon or playing it straight. Mitchum's the aging Marshall eased out of his job, George Kennedy is the equally aging varmint whose gang (led by whippersnapper David Carradine) plans a train robbery. One can imagine John Wayne as the Marshall and Mitchum as the rogue, but the movie would still fall flat. Finally, The Yakuza (1975) finds Mitchum in his weathered seventies form, and easily the best thing about Sydney Pollack's stately film. The Paul Schrader-Robert Towne script heads to Japan for some cultural lessons and much finger-severing. All in all, the set shows the range of a perpetually underestimated actor who never stopped being cool. --Robert Horton
D**N
One of the best of the Warner boxsets
This is one of the best of the Warner "Signature Collection" boxsets, because it collects some of the most interesting (if not as well-known or popular) titles starring Robert Mitchum. For any "auteurist", this collection is essential, because it contains important works directed by Otto Preminger (ANGEL FACE), Josef von Sternberg (with an assist - actually, a studio-imposed take-over - by Nicholas Ray: MACAO), Vincente Minnelli (HOME FROM THE HILL). There's also THE SUNDOWNERS, possibly one of the most charming movies directed by Fred Zinnemann, THE YAKUZA, a deliberately provocative melodrama - one of the first to attempt to graft Asian genre conventions in an American framework - written by Paul and Leonard Schrader and directed by Sydney Pollack, and THE GOOD GUYS AND THE BAD GUYS, a journeyman Western directed by Burt Kennedy. The transfers are exemplary, and ANGEL FACE (one of the moodiest and most psychologically complex of film-noirs), MACAO (with some elaborately decorated sequences which show von Sternberg's skills at their best), HOME FROM THE HILL (perhaps the most operatic and ripely detailed of Minnelli's melodramas) and THE SUNDOWNERS (a relaxed and tender family chronicle, set - at that time - in the rarely seen Australian outback) make this package worth the price.
R**E
Got to love him!
Mitchum is a one of a kind guy.The films are great. He always had a way of making things look so easy,like a walk in the park.I was in Japan when he make The Yakusa,and watched him walk down the streets,with all kinds of heads turning,while the filming was going on. Something to see.Macao with Jane Rusell was another great one,with Brad Dexter playing the meanest of the mean! Worth the purchase!
A**W
A Great Robert Mitchum collection
What can you say about this collection except that it is a keeper. RobertMitchum can walk thru a small, short movie like "Not As A Stranger" and hemakes it good. )Well, in that movie, Sinatra helped.) Regarding this box set, "The Sundownders" and "Home From The Hills" are unacclaimed masterpieces. "Macao" and "Angel Face" are classics. "The Yakuza" standsout by itself. "The Good Guys And The Bad Guys" is a well-done westernwith humor added.
F**S
Good movies
They certainly knew how to make movies way back when. The movies in this collection arevery good indeed. I have enjoyed the ones I have seen.
D**B
Disappointingly Poor Quality
These DVDs are very low quality. In 4 of the DVDs, the video would pause partway through because the player hit a defective spot in the recording. With two of them, I was able to forward slightly through the trouble spots and get through the entire move, but two of them were so bad with bad spots every minute or two that I finally threw them out and borrowed them from the library in order to see the movies. "Home From the Hill", the reason I bought the collection in the 1st place, fortunately came out fine.
O**F
Great Collection
I have always liked Robert Mitchum. Was so glad so be able to get this Signature Collection. I am an old movie buff. I like a good story, good actors and a PLOT, something missing from most of today's movies. Would recommend highly.
V**Y
A must for Mitchum fans
I bought the collection mostly for The Sundowners, a movie I remember from my youth, but it is well worth getting for the rest of the movies, as they are all very entertaining, and give an intriguing glimpse of life as it used to be.
N**N
One of the Great ones...
One of the few male actors, who influence us when we were young. Who was it that said..."There goes the man, we think we are going to be when we grow, and the man we wished had been, when we are old."...
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