The Sundowners (1960)

Fred Zinnermann's The Sundowners is the perfect Sunday afternoon movie: a cozy film opting for character development rather than a winding story. However, you have to stomach a bunch of Americans emulating Australian dialects - this is a Hollywood production set in the vast lands of Australia. The film explores the clash between nomadic forms of life and the urge to settle down. This clash takes place within a family. Paddy is a sheep drover and his wife Ida would like nothing more than to buy a farm and lead a quiet life there. The son is on Ida's side. Paddy tries to take on the role of authoritative Patriarch, but all along, we know that his heart his not in it. Paddy takes a job as a sheep-shearer and in lengthy, fine-looking scenes the film explores the details of everyday life. When they have earned a little money, Paddy spends it on booze and gambling. The son starts to race a horse so that they earn enough to buy the farm. The merit of the film is that it never leaves this sense of the ordinary but at the same time it shows a type of dramatic conflict that is never really articulated. I am never completely sure what Paddy's nomadic desire is all about and the film captures well the kind of stunted conversations family members often have where serious matters are dealt-with with off-hand gestures so as to reduce the tense, but the tense is still there, it just moves to another level. It focuses on the tensions of family life without leaning on the big Revelation or the big Fight. Instead, it shows a sort of quiet affection between the characters in a way I think is quite unusual in this type of Hollywood setting.

Well, I don't know - I really liked this movie. It's beautifully filmed and it doesn't try to be more than it is: a story about what one considers important. What is more, Robert Mitchum is great as the unruly wanderer. His acting rarely falls into stereotypes. His character all along has a sort of tenderness that he also tries to repress, trying to convince himself that he is the ragged wanderer. In other movies, much of the material of The Sundowners would turn into schmaltz. But here, even the sheep-shearing contest turns into an existential journey with Mitchum sweating like a pig.

But OK OK maybe I was seduced by the film in problematic ways. I does romanticize Australian outback life a great deal (even though it also shows its hardships). But I couldn't resist the drastic shifts the film is toying with: a jolly seen is turned into unsettling ones. Some reviewers complain that the film is too haphazard and that too much random stuff is going on. Well, that is precisely what I liked! (At the same time I know that some of the things that takes place happen too quickly, and I know that if I were to show the film to one of my friends, with whom I always have deep disagreements about movies, would exclaim: BUT THEY ARE SO STUPID! Well, sometimes people are.)