Robert Mitchum: Playing It Cool - Criterion Channel Teaser

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Original Hollywood bad boy Robert Mitchum’s blend of rugged masculinity, antiauthoritarian attitude, and lightly bemused irony made him one of the defining faces of postwar film noir, a genre upon which he left an indelible mark in stone-cold classics like OUT OF THE PAST, CROSSFIRE, and ANGEL FACE. Unnervingly at home in antihero roles, he embodied some of the most frightening villains in all of cinema, including the menacing, knuckle-tattooed preacher in Charles Laughton’s dark fairy tale THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and the psychotic ex-con out for revenge in the terrifying home-invasion thriller CAPE FEAR. But out of the noir shadows, Mitchum’s nonchalant air and unforced naturalism lent something special to a wide array of films, including William A. Wellman’s fascinatingly stylized snowbound western TRACK OF THE CAT and Vincente Minnelli’s florid family melodrama HOME FROM THE HILL. Encompassing Mitchum’s autumnal turns in films like the world-weary crime drama THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE and Jim Jarmusch’s DEAD MAN, this career-spanning tribute to the legend known as “Old Rumple Eyes” is proof positive that he was, quite simply, one of the all-time coolest guys ever to grace the screen.