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(NEW FILM RESTORATION!)
Directed by Fritz Lang
Germany | 1931 | 110 minutes | In German | English Subtitles | (PG)
Synopsis: Of all Fritz Lang’s creations, none have been more innovative or influential than M, the film that launched German cinema into the sound era with stunning sophistication and mesmerising artistry. A spate of child killings has stricken a terrified Berlin. Peter Lorre gives a legendary performance as the murderer Hans Beckert, who soon finds himself chased by all levels of society. From cinema’s first serial killer hunt, Lang pulls back to encompass social tapestry, police procedural, and underworld conspiracies in an astonishingly multi-faceted and level-headed look at a deeply incendiary topic. One of the greatest psychological thrillers of all time, M remains as fresh and startling almost 80 years on.
Samt el qusur (Original Title)
Directed by Moufida Tlatli
Tunisia | 1994 | 128 minutes | In Arabic | English Subtitles | 18+
Synopsis: During the funeral of Prince Sid'Ali, 25-year-old Alia visits the palace where she spent her childhood and where her mother was a servant. She never knew her father - he may even have been the prince. As she wanders the deserted corridors, the images of her youth return, such as her forbidden friendship with Sarra, daughter of one of the princes, who taught Alia to love the lute. She also re-experiences memories of her mother, the brave and beautiful Khedija, who protected Alia against the furtive desires of the prince. Director Moufida Tlatli's film delicately reveals the lonely lives of the women who were locked up for life in an Arab palace, half slaves, half mistresses.
[RSVP - 7:00 PM - CLICK HERE]
Directed by Jonas Carpignano
Italy | 2015 | 111 minutes | In Italian, French, Arabic | English Subtitles | (PG)
Synopsis: This remarkably timely, eye-opening look at an all-too-real issue charts the death-defying struggle of African migrants as they risk everything to start a new life in Europe. Ayiva (first time actor Koudous Seihon in a revelatory performance) and Abas (Alassane Sy) are close friends from Burkina Faso determined to make it to Italy in order to find work and provide for their families back home. But even after surviving the harrowing journey—desert bandits, a treacherous sea voyage, arrest—nothing can prepare the two men for the hostility and violence that awaits them. A gripping tale of survival told with vivid realism, Mediterranea immerses viewers in the heart of a humanitarian crisis that for far too many is a lived reality.
[RSVP OPENS APRIL 30]
Directed by Lee Chang-dong
South Korea | 2007 | 142 minutes | In Korean | English Subtitles | (18+)
Synopsis: Lee Chang-dong's riveting, critically lauded drama is a beautifully rendered exploration of motherhood, grief, faith, and emotional survival. Cannes Best Actress Award-winner Jeon Do-yeon plays Shin-ae, a single mother who relocates to her husband's hometown Miryang ("Secret Sunshine") for a new start his sudden passing. Attempting to make a new life there for her young son is a challenge, and she manages to befriend only a bumbling repair man with dubious intentions. When tragedy strikes again, Shin-ae undergoes an emotionally shattering journey that pits her against everything she's known about humanity, love, forgiveness, and God.
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[RSVP OPENS MAY 7]
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Italy | 1960 | 143 minutes | In Italian | English Subtitles | (G)
Synopsis: Michelangelo Antonioni invented a new film grammar with this masterwork. An iconic piece of challenging 1960s cinema and a gripping narrative on its own terms, L’avventura concerns the enigmatic disappearance of a young woman during a yachting trip off the coast of Sicily, and the search taken up by her disaffected lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and best friend (Monica Vitti, in her breakout role). Antonioni’s controversial international sensation is a gorgeously shot tale of modern ennui and spiritual isolation.
(NEW FILM RESTORATION!)
Location: Sorbonne University, Al Reem Island
[RSVP OPENS MAY 7]
Directed by Robert Bresson
France | 1959 | 76 minutes | In French | English Subtitles | (G)
Synopsis: This incomparable story of crime and redemption from the French master Robert Bresson follows Michel, a young pickpocket who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train stations of Paris. As his compulsive pursuit of the thrill of stealing grows, however, so does his fear that his luck is about to run out. A cornerstone of the career of this most economical and profoundly spiritual of filmmakers, Pickpocket is an elegantly crafted, tautly choreographed study of humanity in all its mischief and grace, the work of a director at the height of his powers.
Actor Robert Mitchum's incomparable career stretched across five decades as he blossomed from a bit player in war films and westerns in the 1940s into a bona fide star collaborating with iconoclastic filmmakers such as Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Jacques Tourneur, John Huston, Vincente Minnelli, and Nicholas Ray. The magnetic presence he created on screen has endured as a paragon of timeless cool. We encourage you to explore his legacy through films in the photo gallery below.
Directed by William Wellman
Robert Mitchum’s extraordinary, Oscar-nominated performance as the stoic, exhausted, and quietly beleaguered Lieutenant Walker in this adaptation of correspondent Ernie Pyle’s dispatches from the war in Europe, made him a star. Director William Wellman, himself a WWI vet, and producer Lester Cowan closely collaborated with Pyle (played by Burgess Meredith, who was doing service in the Air Force at the time) to make a film that was true to the life of the WWII soldier—the absolute exhaustion, the endurance of terror and shock and loss, the spells of boredom, the camaraderie. The result is a film built like a ballad, unlike any other of its era. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
This lovely, eloquently simple film about returning WWII vets and their difficulties adjusting to the homefront was made and released by RKO to get the jump on The Best Years of Our Lives. Robert Mitchum’s Tabeshaw, who has come home with a steel plate in his head, and his pal Cliff (Guy Madison), who left as a boy and has returned as a man, spend their days looking for something they can relate to, and the action is comprised of a series of small encounters, many of which (for instance, Madison and Dorothy McGuire’s war widow flanking a vet with the shakes at a lunch counter) are quietly devastating. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
A bit of an anomaly within Minnelli’s often more colorful and ebullient oeuvre, this black-and-white, paranoiac romantic thriller finds the master harnessing his consummate stylishness to spin a haunting, noirish tale. Timid Ann (Katharine Hepburn) marries the highly eligible Alan Garroway (Robert Taylor), whose wealth and good looks conceal an underlying and profound cruelty. Ann grows increasingly obsessed with learning the truth about what happened to Alan’s brother, Michael (Mitchum), who has been missing for some time… This gripping movie casts Hepburn, Taylor, and Mitchum all against type, and was one of three films that Mitchum filmed simultaneously following his breakout performance in The Story of G.I. Joe. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Tourneur’s landmark noir boasts one of Mitchum’s most iconic roles. He is magnetic as Jeff, the low-key proprietor of a gas station in small-town California. When some ill-intentioned characters from Jeff’s shadowy past arrive on the scene looking for him, it sets off a riveting chain of events that reunites him with Kathie (Jane Greer, one of the all-time great femme fatales), the slippery girlfriend of powerful and shady Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas). Out of the Past is singularly rich with twists, turns, and profound ideas concerning the complex relationship between the past, the present, and fate. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Walsh’s powerful, very dark and Freudian film noir/western hybrid—a favorite of Martin Scorsese—stars Mitchum as Jeb, the only survivor of a brutal massacre that wiped out the rest of his family when he was a boy. He is then adopted into the home of another family (led by chilly matriarch Judith Anderson), where he comes to fall in love with his foster sister (Teresa Wright). Now an adult, Jeb still yearns to untangle the messy, suppressed memories of his childhood trauma, and of the mysterious one-armed man who has haunted and tormented him throughout his life. Told in elaborate flashback, with frequent expressionistic touches, Pursued opened up new paths for the western and remains one of Mitchum’s great achievements. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Edward Dmytryk
This adaptation of writer/director-to-be Richard Brooks’s novel The Brick Foxhole, about a group of vets, led by Robert Mitchum’s Sergeant Keeley, searching postwar Washington for their amnesiac friend (George Cooper) so they can clear him of a murder charge, embodies the essence of what has come to be known as “film noir”—moody, troubled characters; nocturnal action; chiaroscuro cinematography; low-key acting spiced with bits of bravura eccentricity; and a plot so crazy that it feels like a nightmare. If Robert Ryan’s unhinged southern bigot, Gloria Grahame’s thoroughly disenchanted cocktail hostess, and Paul Kelly as her ex-(or maybe not) husband get to play the acting solos, Mitchum does a beautiful job on rhythm. (Jordan Raupp, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Lewis Milestone
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath) adapted three of his own classic short stories to create a powerful family portrait in The Red Pony. Young Tom Tiflin is unable to find the love and guidance he needs from his parents. For friendship and support, Tom turns to easy-going hired hand, Billy Buck (Robert Mitchum). In an attempt to become closer to his son, Tom’s father gives him a red pony to raise. As the horse becomes the focus of Tom’s life, it ultimately drives the family further apart as Tom turns to Billy for help in rearing his beloved pet. Family ties and Tom and Billy’s friendship are put to the test when the red pony becomes sick. Directed by award winning director Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front) with an evocative and rich musical score by Aaron Copland.
Directed by Robert Wise
Robert Wise’s synthesis of western and film noir was a breakthrough for the director and further solidified Robert Mitchum as one of Hollywood’s most intriguing leading men. Mitchum plays Jim Garry, an underemployed cowboy enlisted by an old friend (Robert Preston) to collude in a scheme to get an aging cattle owner to sell off his herd at a discount. The deadly intrigue that results from this plot leads Jim to wonder whether he’s on the right side of the conflict and to further crave the trust of the cattle owner’s daughter (Barbara Bel Geddes). Mitchum flourishes amid Wise’s assured direction of screenwriter Lillie Hayward’s foreboding, twist-laden, psychologically rich script, adapted from a novel by Luke Short. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by John Farrow
Mitchum had a good time shooting this ambling comedy thriller, playing a down-on-his-luck gambler who takes a mysterious gig that brings him to an exclusive Baja resort, where he meets up with a colorful crew of characters, including a beautiful woman (Jane Russell) and her movie star boyfriend (Vincent Price). The good time came to a close with endless reshoots of a new ending conceived by RKO studio head Howard Hughes and directed by Richard Fleischer. It is one of Mitchum’s best films. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
“The kind of love I have for the film,” said Nicholas Ray of The Lusty Men, “is not as a filmmaker adoring a child, it’s as a part of the literature of America.” Set in the punishing, rootless world of the rodeo circuit, this is one of Ray’s very best films, and Robert Mitchum’s Jeff McCloud is its sad, busted, but still beating heart. According to Lee Server’s biography of the actor, Mitchum was so excited by his work in the film (in which he did many of his own stunts) that he went out with his director to celebrate, got drunk, appropriated a gun from an FBI agent, and fired it into a stack of dishes. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Joseph von Sternberg
Nicholas Ray was brought on to finish this atmospheric crime yarn after producer Howard Hughes forced Josef von Sternberg off the project. (Allegedly, Robert Mitchum helped write a few scenes with Ray.) But its initial director’s signature textures and tones still shine through: dresses and gloves sheathed in glitter; an Escher-like casino; a pier-set finale that recalls Sternberg’s The Docks of New York. It was, by all accounts, an unpleasant, tumultuous production. The final movie, though, is buoyant—a shimmering cinematic vacation starring Mitchum as an American runaway tasked with capturing a crime lord while also wooing a singer played by Jane Russell. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Otto Preminger
Robert Mitchum finds himself caught up in the machinations of a femme fatale in Preminger’s seminal noir. When ambulance driver Frank Jessup is summoned to a Beverly Hills mansion after wealthy Catherine Tremayne is evidently poisoned, he enters the orbit of her enterprising stepdaughter, Diane (Jean Simmons), who persuades Frank to quit his job and become her chauffeur—and ultimately her lover. But after sensing there may be a devious agenda behind her gentle facade, he must find a way to extricate himself from her schemes before it’s too late. Mitchum is as sympathetic and charismatic as ever in this gripping thriller to rival Preminger’s other great noirs. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by William Wellman
In this CinemaScope western adventure, Robert Mitchum is ex-con farmer Matt Calder, who lives with his young son in a remote riverside area. Gambler Harry (Rory Calhoun) and his fiancée Kay (Marilyn Monroe), a former saloon singer, are stranded while en route to collect on a mining claim, and Matt takes them in. When Harry tests the limits of Matt’s hospitality, he makes off with his horse and rifle, leaving Kay behind. Susceptible to the threat of hostile Indians, Matt, his son, and Kay make off down the river in Harry’s abandoned raft, but the river itself proves to be just as perilous… Monroe and Preminger had a famously rocky on-set rapport (prompting Preminger to buy out his own contract from Fox), but Mitchum’s effortless subtlety beautifully balances Monroe’s broad strokes. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by William Wellman
Mitchum reunited with his Story of G.I. Joe director William Wellman (“I was very, very fond of him,” Mitchum said of Wellman, “and he tolerated me”) for a different kind of movie, based on a Walter Van Tilburg Clark novel, about a homesteading family in snow country whose livestock is being destroyed by a roaming mountain lion. Wellman and his DP William Clothier (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance) worked out a stark visual design, keeping everything—sets, costumes, make-up, and exteriors—in black and white tones, with the exceptions of one scarlet hunting jacket and one yellow scarf. They also shot on location at Mt. Rainier, where 30-foot snowdrifts made for the most arduous and exhausting shoot of Mitchum’s career. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Charles Laughton
Robert Mitchum’s turn in the only film directed by Laughton is a towering achievement. An expressionist, southern gothic noir, The Night of the Hunter (adapted by James Agee from Davis Grubb’s novel) tracks the devious exploits of self-styled reverend and serial killer Harry Powell (Mitchum) as he gets out of jail and sets out to wed Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), the widow of his deceased cellmate, and murder her for her hidden fortune; it falls to her children to stop the madman living in their house. Mitchum is the charismatic monster lurking at the center of Laughton and Agee’s lyrical nightmare (one of only two films completed from an Agee script), and it ranks among cinema’s greatest and most chilling performances. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by John Huston
With a clever script by director John Huston and screenwriting veteran John Lee Mahin, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957) stars Roberts Mitchum as a no-nonsense Marine and Deborah Kerr as a dedicated nun: a decidedly odd couple stranded on a South Pacific island overrun by hostile Japanese forces during World War II. Their struggle to survive and their growing friendship are beautifully captured by the camera of superb cinematographer Oswald Morris, and given further support by composer Georges Auric's lovely score.
Directed by Arthur Ripley
This tale of moonshine runners in the hills of Tennessee and Kentucky was the most personal project of Robert Mitchum’s entire career—in addition to starring, he produced and co-wrote it. Korean War vet Lucas (Mitchum) returns home and sets about working for his family’s moonshine business, making perilous deliveries in a modified hot rod. But he soon finds himself taking heat from both the cold-blooded city gangsters who want to take control of the moonshine network and the cops who want to crack down on it. A veritable cult classic with driving scenes that still seem daring, Thunder Road is both an exhilarating ride and a richly characterized expression of Mitchum’s artistry. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Robert Parrish
This Technicolor western adapted from a novel by Tom Lea stars Robert Mitchum as an expat mercenary who fled to Mexico at age 14 after avenging his father’s murder. He’s hired by a cruel Mexican governor (Pedro Armendáriz) to carry out an arms deal that takes him to Texas, where his refusal to help hunt Apaches puts him in conflict with a U.S. Army major (Gary Merrill)—and into the orbit of the major’s unhappy wife (Julie London). Mitchum’s layered performance as a reluctantly violent man at a moral crossroads, and caught between two national identities, is the heart of Parrish’s elegiac, cerebral western, exquisitely shot by Alex Phillips and Floyd Crosby. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Vincente Minnelli’s widescreen color melodramas for MGM are all very special, and this adaptation of William Humphrey’s sprawling 1958 saga of an overpowering Texas landowner and his family (with echoes of Giant and The Big Country) is one of the finest. Mitchum—whose Captain Hunnicutt was intended for Clark Gable—got along very well with Minnelli (they’d worked together a decade earlier on Undercurrent), but less well with his younger co-star George Peppard, who asked Mitchum if he’d studied the Stanislavsky Method. “No,” said Mitchum, “but I’ve studied the Smirnoff Method.” (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr star in a heartwarming romance as big as the Australian Outback--The Sundowners. Australia, 1920s. Ida Carmody (Kerr) loves her husband, Paddy (Mitchum), and Paddy loves the wandering life traveling the wide-open Outback as a sheep drover. Ida and their son, Sean (Michael Anderson), long to settle down on a ranch of their own. But no ranch can ever be big enough to hold hard-drinking, hard-gambling Paddy, no matter his intentions. And Ida should know that forced to choose between the home she yearns for and a wanderlust life with Paddy, she will follow her heart ... and her husband.
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) is fresh out of jail following an eight-year bid for rape, and the first order of business is terrorizing lawyer Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck), who testified against him, along with Bowden’s wife (Polly Bergen) and teenage daughter (Lori Martin). J. Lee Thompson’s influential thriller, scored by Bernard Herrmann and shot by Sam Leavitt, features a performance from Mitchum that channels the menace and malice of his Harry Powell from The Night of the Hunter. Mitchum and Peck—both recast in supporting roles in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake—enact a mortal struggle that is enduringly gripping, harrowing and iconic. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki
The triumph and tragedy of the World War II heroes who stormed Normandy Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944, are immortalized in this film. Seen through the eyes of Allied generals, foot soldiers, strategists and paratroopers, The Longest Day recounts the largest and greatest military mission of all time. In a battle that would change the course of history, 5,000 ships unloaded over 3 million men on the beaches of France, and the Allies gained a valuable foothold on enemy territory, at an incalculable cost. This massive production required five directors and featured an international cast of thousands, including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, Eddie Albert, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Peter Lawford, Rod Steiger, Stuart Whitman, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Curt Jürgens and more!
Directed by Howard Hawks
The first of Howard Hawks’s two variations on his own Rio Bravo finds Robert Mitchum playing a hard-drinking sheriff who teams up with an old friend (hired gun John Wayne) to protect a wealthy rancher (Ed Asner) and his family from the threatening advances of another rancher’s fearsome gang. Along the way, they enlist the help of a gambler with a distinctive hat (James Caan) and an aging, Native American deputy sheriff (Arthur Hunnicutt)—but, against such great odds, will this motley crew survive? Mitchum supplies his own distinctive charm and charisma, and Hawks masterfully imbues the proceedings with both a narrative leanness and an expansive sense of character. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by David Lean
Lovely, headstrong Rosy (Sarah Miles) cannot forsake her passionate romance with the handsome British officer (Christopher Jones). Yet there is a greater love - the devotion of her reserved schoolteacher husband Charles (Robert Mitchum), who stands by Rosy when her illicit affair leads to a charge of treason. Two honored alumni of Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago - director David Lean and screenwriter Robert Bolt - frame this brooding tale within the expansive beaches, craggy cliffs and heathered hills of Ireland's Dingle Peninsula. Freddie Young's lush cinematography and John Mills' memorable portrayal of a town simpleton won Academy Awards. The remarkable movie containing them casts a haunting spell.
Directed by Peter Yates
In Peter Yates’s adaptation of George V. Higgins’s novel, Robert Mitchum is Eddie, an aging, Boston-area gunrunner facing a prison bid for a job gone awry and caught in a web of deals and double-crosses while grappling with whether to give up his former associates to the feds. Fully integrating himself within a stellar ensemble cast (including a brilliant array of character actors, including Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, and Steven Keats) and blending into Yates’s finely created working-class atmosphere, Mitchum gives one of his career-best performances here, conjuring a blend of melancholy, spiritual exhaustion, and cloaked malevolence. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Sydney Pollack
East meets West in the form of two iconic stars: Japanese gangster film star Ken Takakura teams with Mitchum in a thriller set in Tokyo’s treacherous criminal underworld. Mitchum delivers an alternately rough and sleepy, cynical and gentle performance as retired cop Kilmer, who returns to Japan after many years to help an old army buddy (Brian Keith) after his daughter is kidnapped by a yakuza boss. Navigating the complex codes of the yakuza ethos, he’s guided by Ken (Takakura), a former gangster and brother of Mitchum’s old flame, but betrayals and double crosses lie ahead in Paul Schrader’s first feature screenplay, co-written with his brother Leonard and Robert Towne. Even in his late fifties, Mitchum proves he’s fully capable of handling complex action choreography. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Dick Richards
In the first half of the 1970s, Robert Mitchum reached a new peak, the end of which came with this sepulchrally nostalgic, neon-lit adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s second Philip Marlowe novel. The film has its charms—not the least of which is a cameo appearance by Jim Thompson…as Charlotte Rampling’s husband—but Mitchum (who would reprise the role of Marlowe in the truly terrible 1978 version of The Big Sleep) is the one who gives the film its secret force, as if he were confronting the end of both his leading-man identity and the world that formed him as a star with bravery and grace. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch’s hypnotic, parable-like, revisionist Western follows the spiritual rebirth of a dying 19th-century accountant (Johnny Depp) named William Blake (no relation to the poet . . . or is there?). Guiding Blake through a treacherous landscape of U.S. Marshals, cannibalistic bounty hunters, shady missionaries, and cross-dressing fur traders is a Plains Indian named Nobody (Gary Farmer), one of the most fully realized Native American characters in contemporary cinema. Dead Man doubles as a barbed reflection on America’s treatment of its indigenous people and a radical twist on the myths of the American West. Jarmusch’s metaphysical masterpiece features Robert Mitchum in one of his final roles, as a gun-toting, cigar-smoking factory owner. (Jordan Raup, NYFF Retrospective)