WOW! Robert Mitchum's Max Cady is the most terrifying villain I have ever seen! I don't know that any other movie has kept me so taut with dread. All the shots of hands. Mitchum's animal physicality, that is noted but not overdone. His bare chest. That third act! The muddy river water that makes the most civilized of men look like Colonel Kurtz.
I have noticed this a lot recently: what I've been calling The Sandman Strategy. I have never read nor watched Gaiman's Sandman, but I have seen a lot of haunted faces mention issue #4 (I think that's the right number) with voices of true horror. In interviews, Gaiman said that he loaded an early issue with the darkest and most disturbing content he could in order to leave readers in no doubt of how far he was willing to go (though he never intended to go that far again), so that they would never assume all would be well. Similarly, this film quickly establishes the terrifying stakes and then tortures us by moving them closer and further away from the characters, just as Cady psychologically tortures his victims with the knowledge of his presence.
This movie is crafted so perfectly. I thought Bernard Herrmann's score was going to be distractingly dramatic, but the story matched its menace. The editing only gives us brief chances to breathe and then squeezes all of the air out of the movie. Look how a scene of basic expositional dialogue is elided with Peggy's nightmare. Every time we turn around, Mitchum is there with his evil eyes and cruel smile. It is incessant. In the same way that Cady is careful to never do anything prohibited by the letter of the law, the film is constantly suggesting and threatening extreme violence without ever showing us anything but a chokehold, a bruise, a little black-and-white blood…
I know that there is a nineties Scorsese version, but I will not be watching it. 1) I rarely like Scorsese films. 2) The era would lend itself to more overt violence. 3) It can't be this good.
Prepare the Favorite Movies list! Someone new is moving in.