1955 and 1956 are the two years in which Mitchum’s talent as an actor was recognized with Night of the Hunter, and when he became his own producer, starting with Bandido!, directed by Richard Fleischer. The film was shot on location with a partly Mexican crew, and with a script rewritten daily. Fleischer had ample room for improvisation, starting from a canvas that had been exploited countless times – the American adventurer in the midst of a revolution or civil war, indifferent at first and finally taking sides. The dramatis personae were just as typecast: Zachary Scott as the cowardly husband and arms dealer, ready to sell out his own wife, Gilbert Roland as the generous Mexican rebel, Rodolfo Acosta as the treacherous henchman, and the German Ursula Thiess as the indispensable exotic beauty. The team of Fleischer and Mitchum had already revamped John Farrow’s His Kind of Woman into a tongue-in-cheek satire, when they reshot it three times on Howard Hughes’ instructions. Here, the director’s sophistication is at its best as he follows the adventurer made all but invincible by his irony and nonchalance. The sequence in which Mitchum, from his balcony, witnesses a skirmish and changes its outcome without interrupting what he’s doing or tipping his glass – earning in the process the nickname alacrán (scorpion) from Roland – sums up his new persona and gives the film a frenetic rhythm that never weakens to the end.

Bernard Eisenschitz