We open with the film-noir intrigue. A gangster wants access to his money. He’s stuck in Italy and wants to get back to America. So, a patsy is found, without a serious criminal record and with a similar build to the gangster. There’s an identity to steal.
Buy His Kind of Woman Blu-rayHe’s the ticket back to the states, and the gangster’s money. The only hitch: he must spend a week at a resort in Mexico with people with the strangest backgrounds possible, so that essentially a complete other movie must occur between the inciting incident and the bad guy collecting his due.
His Kind of Woman kind of feels like a noir, and a romance. Robert Mitchum was 45 here but looks young enough to be a kind of heartthrob. He plays Milner, who is enticed to go down to Mexico for a $50,000 job, no questions asked. On the way there, he meets songbird Jane Russell, who happens to be heading to the same resort.
He wants to get with her, but she’s taken by film star and big-game hunter Mark Cardigan, played in a wonderfully fun (and against type) performance by Vincent Price. She doesn’t want Cardigan, she wants Milner… especially when Cardigan’s wife shows up.
It’s hard to overstate how odd the structure of this film’s drama is. The first 15 minutes are basically deep crime drama: gangster Nick Ferraro (Raymond Burr) needs to escape his American exile. He needs a new face. His goons pick a victim: Milner. Milner’s framed for debt, sent down to Mexico…
And then hangs out for 45 minutes while the movie doesn’t do much. He meets strangers around the resort: a drunk who wants to mingle, a writer who plays chess with himself, a young couple somehow in trouble. And there’s Vincent Price, who wants everyone to know how actually awesome he is, even if no one is paying attention.
This goes on for the better part of an hour, before people start getting murdered, and things start getting real. I won’t spoil how the plot resolves itself, but I will say this is one of my favorite Vincent Price performances in anything. He’s completely against type as an actor who wishes he was more like his characters than himself.
While the beginning and resolution of the film are standard noir (give or take some of the odd characters in the movie), the center of the film is completely oddball. It reminded me more of an episode of the ’60s show The Prisoner, or Gore Verbinski’s weird movie A Cure for Wellness, than a typical noir movie. Mitchum’s character is thrust into the society of a bunch of weirdos, and while their roles become eventually clear, the emotional thrust of the story is constant oddness and confusion.
This is an absolute odd duck of a film. It has some hard action, and some devious nastiness, especially when the villain finally catches up with Mitchum. I can imagine anyone in a contemporary audience finding every aspect of this film bizarre or irritating. I, for one, loved every minute of it. It’s self-referential without ever being precious or pretentious. It’s artificial without ever winking at the camera. The story is inherently ridiculous, but it takes itself seriously enough that it only pokes fun at itself, not the audience.
And there’s fun songs, dances, costumes, and near the end, some cool action. The film apparently took a very long time to make (relying on IMDB trivia for this) because producer Howard Hughes was making his typical trouble. The film’s direction is credited to John Farrow, who also made The Night Has a Thousand Eyes. But apparently, Richard Fleischer was involved with reshoots. For me, it’s fun to watch these old movies and try to spy where the reality ends and the matte paintings and rear projection begin.
But mostly, I enjoyed the fun story. Mitchum is kind of a scoundrel, but he likes this Russell gal. She’s lying constantly about her wealth. He can tell and doesn’t care. Meanwhile, the Vincent Price character seems to be in love with the girl, too, but that’s probably more for show, because he hates spending time with her. Until his wife arrives. And in the background of this personal drama is an evil gangster who wants to sneak back into the U.S.
I think His Kind of Woman is pretty good for a general audience, if a bit long. For a classic Hollywood freak like me, this is the most fun watching a movie I’ve had in a while.
This Blu-ray presentation looks fantastic. Some shots look pretty soft, but it’s difficult to tell if that’s the disc, the extant materials, or what was on the finished film. For the most part, though, this black and white presentation looks immaculate.
His Kind of Woman has been released on Blu-ray by the Warner Archive Collection. Extras on the disc include a commentary track by film historian Vivian Sobchack, cartoon Bunny Hugged, and a trailer.
