His Kind of Woman (1951)

User Rating:

7.3/10   

Director:

John Farrow

Writers:

Frank Fenton (written by) and
Jack Leonard (written by)

Release Date:

29 August 1951 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Film-Noir | Thriller | Drama

Tagline:

They were two of a kind ! ...and bound to meet, but neither of them knew what such a meeting would mean!

Plot:

A deported gangster's plan to re-enter the USA involves skulduggery at a Mexican resort, and gambler Dan Milner is caught in the middle.

Plot Keywords:

Gangster | Mexico | Boat | Shirtless Male Bondage | Shooting

US TV Schedule:

Tue. July 21

11:00 AM

TCM

Cast

Robert Mitchum	...	Dan Milner
Jane Russell	...	Lenore Brent
Vincent Price	...	Mark Cardigan
Tim Holt	...	Bill Lusk
Charles McGraw	...	Thompson / Narrator
Marjorie Reynolds	...	Helen Cardigan
Raymond Burr	...	Nick Ferraro
Leslie Banning	...	Jennie Stone (as Leslye Banning)
Jim Backus	...	Myron Winton
Philip Van Zandt	...	Jose Morro
John Mylong	...	Martin Krafft
Carleton G. Young	...	Gerald Hobson
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Robert J. Wilke	...	Nick Ferraro (scenes deleted)

Also Known As:

Smiler with a Gun (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

120 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

UK:12 | USA:Approved (PCA #14533) | Sweden:(Banned) (1951-1965)

Company:

RKO Radio Pictures

Trivia:

John Farrow finished the film, but Howard Hughes brought in Richard Fleischer to add a few shots (Hughes himself co-wrote the ending with Fleischer). Fleischer ended up reshooting the entire film.

Goofs:

Continuity: One of the three whip marks on Milner's back is missing when he escapes his captors and backs away down the ship's corridor.

Quotes:

[Saying goodbye]
Dan Milner: I'll see ya all of a sudden, Sam.

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Private Screenings: Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell" (1996)

Soundtrack:

Ramblin' Wreck from Georgia Tech

The first great anti-noir?

This brilliant and mind-boggling film noir might be more properly called an anti-noir, doing for the crime movie what 'The Missouri Breaks' would do for the Western. It's not every noir hero who both offers marriage guidance AND does his own ironing.

'His Kind of Woman' is, in fact, three movies. It starts off as a fairly straight film noir, although its poker-faced pastiche of 'Out of the Past' is a little TOO poker-faced. Then, when the hero goes to Mexico to meet the other characters, the plot stops dead and enters narrative limbo, in a kind of noir precursor to Bunuel's 'The Exterminating Angel': Six Noir Characters In Search Of A Plot.

Then lunacy truly takes hold, as the plot eventually arrives, and Vincent Price, playing a barmy ham actor, takes over from Mitchum (magnificent as ever, baffled and goaded by a plot even less alert than he!) as the presiding spirit, and turns a moody thriller into the giddiest farce, where all the unpleasant aspects of film noir (fatalism, misogyny) are happily overturned. Proof that genre-busting didn't begin with Melville or Godard.