THE SUNDOWNERS (1960) C widescreen 113m dir: Fred Zinnemann
w/Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Peter Ustinov, Glynis Johns, Dina Merrill, Chips Rafferty, Michael Anderson Jr., Lola Brooks, Wylie Watson, John Meillon, Ronald Fraser, Gerry Duggan, Leonard Teale, Peter Carver, Dick Bentley, Mervyn Johns, Molly Urquhart, Ewen Solon, Max Osbiston, Mercia Barden
From Variety 's contemporary review of the film: "Jon Cleary's novel is the basic source from which director Fred Zinnemann's inspiration springs. Between Cleary and Zinnemann lies Isobel Lennart's perceptive, virile screenplay, loaded with bright, telling lines of dialog and gentle philosophical comment. But, fine as the scenario is, it is Zinnemann's poetic glances into the souls of his characters, little hints of deep longings, hidden despairs, indomitable spirit that make the picture the achievement it is.
"On paper, the story sounds something short of fascinating. It tells of a 1920s Irish-Australian sheepdrover whose fondness for the freedom of an itinerant existence clashes with the fervent hope of settling-down shared by his wife (Deborah Kerr) and his son (Michael Anderson Jr.). The wife, in an effort to raise funds for a down-payment on a farm, persuades her husband to accept stationary employment as a shearer.
"Mitchum's rugged masculinity is right for the part. There are moments when he projects a great deal of feeling with what appears to be a minimum of effort. Kerr gives a luminous and penetrating portrayal of the faithful wife, rugged pioneer stock on the outside, wistful and feminine within. There is one fleetingly eloquent scene at a train station, in which her eyes meet those of an elegant lady traveler, that ranks as one of the most memorable moments ever to cross a screen.
"Peter Ustinov, as a whimsical, learned bachelor who joins the family and slowly evolves into a 'household pet,' gives a robust, rollicking performance. Glynis Johns is a vivacious delight as a hotelkeeper who sets her sights on matrimonially-evasive Ustinov.
"Art, photographic and technical skills are extremely well represented by the craftsmen assembled in the bush country of Australia and at Elstree Studios in London."
From the Film Comment website (www.filmcomment.com), this 2017 article about the film by Steven Mears:
"One of the great shocks of my young life came the day I was rummaging through my grandparents’ vinyl collection and discovered, in back of Robert Goulet's Greatest Hits and the cringe-worthy Allan Sherman parody records, a Caribbean folk album recorded by Robert Mitchum! Entitled Calypso --- is like so ..., its cover features the sleepy-eyed noir icon lounging in a tropical bar with a bottle of rum and an admiring brunette --- Max Cady in Margaritaville. Seemingly cut and pressed in camp heaven, the album surprised me with mere existence, but the seismic revelation was that --- questions of appropriation and Bob’s West Indian dialect aside --- it’s actually a wonderful record. The star discovered Calypso while shooting Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison in Trinidad, meeting artists like Mighty Sparrow and studying their phrasing. Anyone who’s seen Thunder Road or The Night of the Hunter can attest to Mitchum’s powerful baritone, but still could hardly anticipate his rigorous commitment to form, down to his mastery of local slang in songs like 'Mama, Looka Boo Boo,' about a father who’s put off his food by his sons’ scorn for his homely face. PC it’s not, but it’s a steel-drummed delight, and as ever, Mitchum takes insouciance quite seriously indeed.
"That may be the central paradox of Robert Mitchum --- with his heavy lids, infamous marijuana bust (costing him 43 days in a prison farm), and Out of the Past catchphrase 'Baby, I don’t care,' he’s easily mistaken for a sleepwalking star, coasting on languid charisma. The fact is that few actors challenged themselves as thoroughly or frequently as Mitchum did, or had a greater understanding of their own abilities. When David Lean asked if he could muster an Irish accent for his role as the cuckolded schoolteacher in Ryan's Daughter, he retorted, 'Come on, David! Which county?'
"Fans of his trench coat-clad antiheroes and smooth-talking sociopaths may approach his role as the Australian patriarch of The Sundowners with the same trepidation I brought to his calypso album. His Paddy Carmody roams the outback with wife Ida (Deborah Kerr) and teenage son Sean (Michael Anderson, Jr.) in search of work as a sheep drover, and the role is a beguiling change of pace, gifting the grayscale actor with a palette of rich, warm colors. Pitching a tent wherever the sun sets --- hence the title --- Paddy savors his itinerant life, content only when casting off the ties that make other men feel secure ('All of Australia, that’s what I own --- the rivers, the plains, all of it!'). Ida and Sean long for a fixed address, and the clash of their yen for stability with Paddy’s wanderlust imbues the picturesque story with conflict.
"Paddy’s needs are simple and few: a hat to shade his eyes, a full belly to thump with pride, steady work --- be it as a herder, shearer, racer, or breeder --- and above all, the wife he adores. With her wind-blown hair and careworn face from worry and laughter, Kerr is earthily radiant. She and the bluff, barrel-chested Mitchum (both sporting flawless accents) have the easy rapport of a long-married couple with no illusions but bone-deep devotion. He celebrates their mortgage-free independence; she chides him that you can’t mortgage a tent. In reality, Kerr was Mitchum’s favorite leading lady; he gladly ceded top billing for the chance to work with her again after Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, telling the production team, 'You can design a 24-foot sign of me bowing to her if you like!' They would collaborate twice more, and their mutual affection is palpable in every scene they share, from the early one where he watches her prepare for bed, his head cocked and eyes half-closed in appreciation.
“'You’re built the way a woman ought to be built,' he proclaims, comparing her favorably to all the 'broomsticks' and glamour girls about town. Released in 1960, The Sundowners is the rare film with regard for the way hardworking people actually look: Mitchum and Kerr are tanned and weather-beaten, and he often appears in his undershirt, not chiseled or clean but authentically of the land. In the film’s most poignant scene, played out with no dialogue, Ida, dusty from the trail, spies an elegant lady in a pink dress through the window of a train and watches her apply her makeup, dreaming of the life she’s sacrificed to her husband’s nomadic ways. But as she observes the debutante with envy, the camera beholds Kerr the way Mitchum does, as the genuine article, a person of sinew and substance without whose companionship the sun might just as well stay down.
"Directed by Fred Zinnemann, The Sundowners has the flavor of John Ford down under, complete with barroom donnybrooks. Indeed, much action occurs in the taverns where Paddy holds court each Saturday night, giving sonorous voice to the ballads of his Irish ancestry like 'The Wild Colonial Boy.' As the admiration of his own boy shifts from Paddy to Rupe, the rakish but kindhearted sea captain traveling with them (an impeccable Peter Ustinov), Paddy becomes the Mitchum we know well: moodily perched at the end of the bar, able to command the room with his magnetism but choosing instead to sit in solitude as the others ignore him.
"When Sean returns from seeing a play with Rupe, Mitchum yields one of the tenderest line readings of his career: 'You went to the show with Rupe ’cause that’s what he likes. Now have a beer with me ’cause that’s what I like.' At once commanding and pathetic, his appeal combines forlorn awareness that his impressionable son favors the more worldly Rupe, pride at the rite of passage he’s about to facilitate, and fear that the important people in his life are pulling in opposite directions, leaving him alone on a bar stool. A towering man, Mitchum could make himself appear small and crestfallen. He could also play high comedy, as in a sequence where he loses a sheep-shearing contest to a toothless old man who never breaks a sweat. Fortunes won and lost in a second, without preamble or prejudice, is the life of a sundowner, and only an actor of Mitchum’s emotional range could manage the turns in the road."
Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Director, Actress (Kerr), Supporting Actress (Johns), and Adapted Screenplay (Isobel Lennart).