His Kind of Woman (1951)
His Kind of Woman is one of those old-school nonsense pictures that Hollywood no longer seems capable of producing without an accompanying shot of self-congratulation; every light little thing now comes packaged with a twinkle in the stars’ eye to assure everyone that they know they’re above it and most assuredly don’t MEAN it, which diminishes the fun by half (an exact figure). That was my issue with the later Steven Soderbergh Danny Ocean pictures, Soderbergh’s fear of being mistaken for a mere entertainer was palpable, and led to the assumption that an incoherent trifle would be less of an offense to the Great Filmmakers’ Code of Conduct than an enjoyable one.
I’m not as far off track as it may appear, His Kind of Woman is, like the Danny Ocean movies (either past or present), an excuse to transport several stars and character actors to a beautiful setting and stage a series of flirtations, near death escapes and exchanges of sideways movie-star banter, all under the flimsiest pretense of some larger story, which, in this case, has something to do with a deported gangster’s efforts to get back into the States and enjoy his illegally gotten gains. The gangster sets up an on again/off again gambler, Dan Milner (Robert Mitchum, who should’ve just been called Robert Mitchum from picture to picture, no writer could invent a name more apt for that man) to take the fall so he can make off with Milner’s identity and get back on U.S. soil. That’s the plot, and it doesn’t kick in for real until about the ninetieth minute. Milner’s in the dark for the majority of the picture, knowing only that he’s to take a fat paycheck and hang out and absorb the pleasures of the island until someone steers him in the right, or any, direction. There has to be self-satire in there somewhere.
His Kind of Woman, produced by Howard Hughes, directed by Richard Fleischer (credited to John Farrow, though Fleischer evidently re-shot most of it) also boasts Vincent Price in a generous, charismatic, humorously unconvincing turn as a famous actor; Charles McGraw (memorable in Fleischer’s significantly tighter The Narrow Margin) as a baddie ; Jane Russell’s breasts as the chief love interest, Tim Holt as a supposedly drunk, late night bearer of exposition, and, why not?, Raymond Burr as the gangster pulling the strings.
The film rests on Mitchum’s no, I really, truly, don’t give a shit charisma (Otto Preminger exploited that apathy to effective, perverse extremes in the Hughes produced Angel Face) as well as the other stars’ game for anything spirit. The picture is never thrilling, rarely truly funny (though it has a few lines that snap) but everything taken together has an unruly appeal that is intensely pleasurable to experience and look back upon later. Films where stars are clearly having fun aren’t always fun themselves, but this is an exception. The chief appeal of His Kind of Woman lies in its determination to follow its characters’ whims with no regard to the constraints and requirements of the genre, allowing for human little moments of tenderness, cleverness, and sensuality. This picture has conviction in something more important, in this case, than story: a lolly-gagging, roundabout, distinctly Hollywood utopia of movie stars screwing around. This is a truly escapist picture, and you won’t find yourself whispering that word under your breath as if you’re in confession: the film wears it proud, and so should you.
★★★
