The Sundowners

United Kingdom

1960

133 Min

Color

1.85:1

English

Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
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SCR Isobel Lennart, Jon Cleary

CAST Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Peter Ustinov, Glynis Johns, Dina Merrill, Chips Rafferty, Michael Anderson Jr., Lola Brooks, Wylie Watson, John Meillon, Ronald Fraser, Molly Urquhart, Gerry Duggan, Leonard Teale, Peter Carver, Dick Bentley, Mervyn Johns, Ewen Solon, Max Osbiston, Mercia Barden

Deborah Kerr as Ida Carmody, an indomitable stick in the Australian outback, makes an impassioned plea for women living a nomadic existence in that spare country down under to the unhappy Jean Halstead, ‘This is good country for sheep and it’s not bad for men. But it’s hard on us women. The men come here because of the sheep and we come here because of the men and most of us finish up looking like the sheep – wrinkled faces, knotty hair, not even much of our own minds.’ Jean replies, ‘I think you’ll always have a mind of your own, Mrs. Carmody.’ She ain’t kidding. Ida has to hold her own against her beer – and gambling-loving husband Paddy, who as a sheep drover in 1920s Australia, keeps his family – Ida and their teenage son Sean – moving with the sheep. Paddy is happy not being tied down, but Ida and Sean want a place to settle down and convince Paddy to take a job as a sheep-shearer in order to make a down payment on a farm. Paddy doesn’t realize it though, and the struggle between Paddy, who wants to be free, and Ida, who wants a home, is the slender thread that ties Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners together. —Filmcritic.com

Director

Fred Zinnemann

Vienna-born Fred Zinnemann had childhood dreams of becoming a musician, and later planned on a law career, before his viewing of the movies of Erich Von Stroheim drew him into the movie business, initially as a cameraman. He came to the United States in 1929, and later found work as an editor, and subsequently as an assistant to documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, and then as an assistant to choreographer Busby Berkeley. He joined MGM in the late ‘30s as a director of comedy shorts, and won an Academy award for his 1938 short subject That Mothers Might Live. Zinnemann moved up to full-length features in 1941, but found little opportunity to work on anything but B-pictures until 1948, with The Search, a drama set in post-World War II Europe. He didn’t really become a major recognized box-office name as a director, however, until 1952 when his Western drama High Noon, starring Gary Cooper, which had been perceived by most observers as headed for commercial disaster, became a monster… read more

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Daniel S.

2Dec11

** 1/2 This is exactly the kind of film that has always puzzled me. Each time I see such a movie, I wonder why the auteur director in question chose this particular book to adapt. In short, why did Fred Zinnemann shoot The Sundowners? If we rule out such motives as an irrepressible desire to visit Australia or taxes in arrears, what's left here ? Sheep, kangaroos, koalas, a bush fire, gentle fights between companions who always smile, the opposition between nomadic and sedentary people, a story with not A SINGLE bad character. I give up and assume that Fred Zinnemann simply loved the novel. As for me, even if I liked The Sundowners, it's already forgotten.Unfortunately.