Robert Mitchum

The centerpiece retrospective of this year’s New York Film Festival celebrates the centenary of Robert Mitchum, paragon of fatalist cool. In her September/October ’17 Film Comment feature “Running Deep,” Imogen Sara Smith observes that Mitchum’s acting “goes on under the surface: amusement, sadness, anger, or banked-down warmth seep through his face the way coals glow through a layer of ash when you blow on them. To think of him ‘accessing emotion’ or ‘creating a character’ feels wrong.” This week, each critic—Smith, NYFF Director and Mitchum retrospective co-programmer Kent Jones, and FC Editorial Assistant and frequent TCM Diarist Steven Mears—brings in a Mitchum performance to delve into. Even if Mitchum self-deprecatingly claimed that he favored the Smirnoff method over Stanislavski, every example deepens our sense of the creative skill set that he kept close to the vest throughout his career. As always, FC Digital Producer Violet Lucca hosts and moderates.