Why I love Robert Mitchum’s performance in Cape… | Little White Lies

In Praise Of

Why I love Robert Mitchum’s per­for­mance in Cape Fear

12 Apr 2022

Words by Adam Scovell

Two well-dressed people sitting in a car, a man and a woman, in a black and white film noir style image.
Two well-dressed people sitting in a car, a man and a woman, in a black and white film noir style image.
Six­ty years after its release, the act­ing great’s unnerv­ing per­for­mance as venge­ful con­vict Max Cady still packs a punch.

He was always ready to explode” was direc­tor J Lee Thompson’s descrip­tion of Robert Mitchum’s act­ing when work­ing with him on their bru­tal 1962 noir Cape Fear. Though the actor already had a track record for play­ing tough guys, even the most ardent Mitchum fan would have been unpre­pared for the mali­cious­ness of this role.

Adapt­ed from John D McDonald’s nov­el The Exe­cu­tion­ers’, Cape Fear is a revenge tale told with a unique­ly evil empha­sis. It fol­lows Sam Bow­den (Gre­go­ry Peck, also the film’s pro­duc­er), a small-town lawyer who lives an idyl­lic life with his wife Peg­gy (Pol­ly Bergen) and his daugh­ter Nan­cy (Lori Mar­tin). Eight years before, Sam tes­ti­fied as a cit­i­zen against Max Cady (Mitchum), a vicious ser­i­al rapist.

On his release, Cady tracks down the Bow­den fam­i­ly and begins to men­ace them. In spite of attempts to run him out of town, Cady is a clever adver­sary; he knows the law and how far he can push it. More than mere­ly men­ac­ing the Bow­dens, how­ev­er, Cady wants his revenge to be as scar­ring as pos­si­ble; he tells Sam that his ulti­mate aim is to rape his wife and daugh­ter. Just how far will Sam go in order to pro­tect his fam­i­ly from such a fate?

For a film made in the ear­ly 1960s, Cape Fear pulls no punch­es in regards to its sub­ject mat­ter. Its heady, sleazy atmos­phere lingers long after view­ing. Though this is down to Lee’s direc­tion and the swel­ter­ing South­ern Geor­gia set­ting as much as any­thing else, the real heart of the film’s men­ace is in Mitchum’s performance.

The actor’s louche swag­ger is the first thing the view­er sees – as the open­ing cred­its roll, he strolls casu­al­ly along in his linen jack­et and Pana­ma hat. Two things tell the view­er this is omi­nous; the first is Bern­hard Herrmann’s music, a leit­mo­tif for Mitchum’s char­ac­ter that ren­ders even his pres­ence on the side­walk a poten­tial threat. The sec­ond is Mitchum him­self – he looks nor­mal at first, but as he encoun­ters peo­ple his detached demeanour becomes apparent.

He stares at a woman in the street, the leer nev­er bet­ter in Mitchum’s career. Anoth­er woman drops some files in front of him. Instead of help­ing her, he just walks on. It’s a sim­ple sce­nario and yet Mitchum’s move­ments sug­gest it to be more than a lazy lack of regard for oth­ers. Women only con­cern Cady in one way. He hates the soci­ety around him; the bit­ter­ness may part­ly be real, in that the film­ing loca­tion of Savan­nah was where Mitchum was put to work in a chain gang for vagrancy when younger.

Close-up portrait of a man wearing a hat and smoking a cigarette, in black and white.

Mitchum had already cre­at­ed anoth­er great noir vil­lain in the peri­od; the preach­er in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter. Sim­i­lar to Cady, Rev­erend Har­ry Pow­ell is a misog­y­nist but man­i­fests on-screen very dif­fer­ent­ly. Their dri­ves are the same, com­bin­ing a dead­ly mix­ture of lust and loathing. Yet the way they oper­ate results in dra­mat­i­cal­ly con­trast­ing per­for­mances, show­ing the full range of Mitchum’s skill. There’s a rea­son why Cady was vot­ed the 28th best vil­lain in the Amer­i­can Film Institute’s 2003 Heroes & Vil­lains poll while Pow­ell came 29th.

On one hand, Pow­ell has built a nar­ra­tive around him to excuse his attacks on women for their mon­ey. It was done in God’s name, legit­imised by his own dement­ed the­ol­o­gy – Cady is a dif­fer­ent affair entire­ly. He doesn’t need any frame of ref­er­ence to live with what he does because he doesn’t care. He enjoys sex­u­al vio­lence against women in the same way he enjoys whiskey and the ubiq­ui­tous cig­ar clenched between his teeth.

The sym­bol­ic fire and thun­der of Laughton’s film is replaced with sweaty innu­en­do in Lee’s, a change exem­pli­fied in Mitchum. His body glis­tens on screen, becom­ing ani­mal-like in the film’s breath-tak­ing final 20 min­utes. Accord­ing to biog­ra­ph­er Lee Serv­er, Mitchum would wan­der the set top­less through­out film­ing, work­ing up rages and even avoid­ing niceties with the crew.

Cady becomes a crea­ture crawl­ing through the swamp, but the point over­all of Thompson’s film is that this is, in anoth­er sense, extreme­ly ordi­nary. Real­i­ty is replete with Max Cadys. He’s not some myth­i­cal preach­er extolling Love and Hate; he’s an every­man, the guy at the bar with the lin­ger­ing stare.

Even Cady’s on-screen oppo­site has a dif­fi­cult time squar­ing up to him. Peck famous­ly was a lit­tle put down by Mitchum’s per­for­mance, large­ly because it stole the lime­light. As Thomp­son sug­gest­ed in a doc­u­men­tary on the film, we were always con­scious of the fact that Peck’s part was in dan­ger of becom­ing sub­sidiary to the villain.”

Such was the momen­tum of the per­for­mance, Mitchum seemed unstop­pable, even for the direc­tor. It’s sur­pris­ing he threw him­self in so deeply con­sid­er­ing it took Lee and Peck deliv­er­ing the actor a case of bour­bon and flow­ers to con­vince him to take the role. In the film’s tens­est sequences this momen­tum comes to the fore.

When final­ly cor­ner­ing Peg­gy on a boat, it seems that Cady will indeed get his revenge and assault Sam’s wife. The scene is slow and har­row­ing, Cady trap­ping Peg­gy with his huge, soak­ing body. The sequence was large­ly impro­vised, show­ing the skill of both actors, but Mitchum in par­tic­u­lar. His move­ments are jagged and wild, the real char­ac­ter revealed under­neath the ini­tial swag­ger of ear­li­er. He bursts through doors; gen­uine­ly so, as the prop men for­got to unlock them. He’s draw­ing on real strength and the adren­a­line shows.

Mitchum cut him­self bad­ly film­ing this sequence but car­ried on regard­less. The blood seen is real, as was Bergen’s reac­tion to Mitchum’s taunt­ing her with eggs, again unscript­ed. It’s one of the most pow­er­ful sequences Hol­ly­wood ever filmed. As Bergen lat­er recalled, his hand was cov­ered in blood, my back was cov­ered in blood. We just kept going, caught up in the scene. They came over and phys­i­cal­ly stopped us.” For a moment, Mitchum was more char­ac­ter than actor – the results are still ter­ri­fy­ing today, even six­ty years on.

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