Steve McQueen

Just realized we didn't have a McQueen thread.

Anyone seen this:



The trailer does look interesting.

Yep, it was a BOMB both financially and critically, but since I consider it an intentional comedy, I cut it some slack. Plus I had the hots for Kathryn Harrold.

I just posted some Robert Mitchum quotes, and Mitch considers McQueen a Mitchum wannabe. At least, I think he implies as much. I love Robert Mitchum, and I know for a fact he was a much wittier man than McQueen, but I love McQueen too. Here, let me post some Mitchum quotes about McQueen now.

"[Steve McQueen] sure don't bring much brains to the party, that kid."

"You've got to realize that a Steve McQueen performance lends itself to monotony."

I'll add more later. I have to watch the restored Metropolis on TCM now.

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Mitchum can talk about monotony. If he didn't find his part interesting, he would listlessly walk through the movie.

I think McQueen was a more interesting actor at the beginning and middle of his career than at the end of it. He was at his best not playing the tough loner in his action movies, but the unpredictable and raffish man boy in films like the Reivers and Love with a Proper Stranger.

I can see where Mitchum is coming from on this in that it always seemed to me McQueen was playing McQueen in every film. Think he was more a film personality rather than a film actor: Fortunately for him, he became a Movie Star, so it didn't matter if he was acting or just being himself.

There's a lot of Mitchum in many of Mitchum's roles, but he had a greater variety of roles (including comedies) over a wider span of age and held his own as a performer in scenes with some very good actors, so yeah, he was an actor and therefore better than McQueen.

Regardless of his acting he was cute

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I do enjoy McQueen in most all of his movies. He's even good for a few laughs in The Blob. Most people will remember him from Bullitt and The Great Escape, but I thought that he may actually have given his best performance in The Sand Pebbles (1966). It's an adventure set in war-torn China in the 1920s but it's really a Vietnam War parable. It basically tells a story about the Americans getting way over their heads in the Far East without a clear plan. The finale has McQueen acting almost completely silently. However, there is a long closeup of his face where his expression changes as if he just discovered that he's in a no-win situation and that such a thing had never occurred to him before in his life. If you watch it, you tell me if you see it. Otherwise, maybe McQueen was just good at reflecting whatever the viewer brought to the film, which if you think about it, does certainly qualify him as a MOVIE STAR.

I think Mitchum's only edge over McQueen was Mitchum on occasion played bad guys and excelled at it. Otherwise Micthum had a habbit of sleep walking through the many routine films he made. Mitchum wasn't very effective in The Winds of War and seemed all wrong in The Championship Season. McQueen was terrible in An Enemy of the People.

I loved McQueen in The Great Escape. He had an irreverant boyish quality that was so much fun to watch.

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I agree I've seen better versions of The Championship Season than the one he was in. And I agree Mitchum, like Brando, would dog it through a movie if the director would let him get away with it or failed to get his interest. But if it was a role and film he enjoyed and someone could keep him focused and there wasn't some other place he'd rather be, he could be as good as any of the top actors, as he proved in working with many of them over the years.

Mitchum was one of those actors who should have retired at age 50-55 before he started looking so old they couldn't trowel on enough makeup to make him look fit and healthy and the right age for his role, like John Wayne and his fat old buddies in Green Beret. Mitchum (like several others) was totally miscast in The Winds of War. Part of the problem is that Hollywood kept casting him as the tough guy and romantic leads when he was just to old to be believeable as either. Actors like Spencer Tracy and George Burns did very well in roles in their later years, but no one was casting them as private eyes or military personnel. Mitchum and Wayne, on the other hand, kept doing tough guy roles when they looked old and tired instead of tough.

I liked The Great Escape and Nevada Smith.

My appreciation of McQueen really blossomed after his death. I think the man appeared in a lot of crap, but when he was good, he was REALLY good. I love THE GREAT ESCAPE, PAPPILLON, THE SAND PEBBLES (if he were given an Oscar, I think it would have been for that), THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR, and one of my favorite guilty pleasures is THE GETAWAY, though I don't think he has ever exuded as much charm and sex appeal on screen as he did in THE RIEVERS, a quiet masterpiece that never got the attention it deserved.

Another one I liked was Hell is for Heroes.

Am I the only one who loved "An Enemy of the People"? -- McQueen is no Brando, but there are some guys you just like to see on screen. Clint Eastwood, etc.. I like Mitchum too, Kirk Douglas, even though I tend to love the more natural methods of acting.

Maybe the coolest actor who ever hit the silver screen...I never tire of watching The Getaway and he's probably the main reason why.

This was just uploaded a few weeks ago - 3 parts.. Made in 1977, and discusses how much he loves "An Enemy of the People" - which is my favorite movie with Steve.

NOW on TCM --- Steve McQueen: Star of the Month
(all played consecutively -- and STILL, no commercials!)

The Thomas Crown Affair - 7/10

The Getaway - 8/10

Papillon - 8.5/10

An Enemy of the People - 10/10

I saw it as a kid, and it left a lasting impression. McQueen is aptly cast as simple guy who knows he's a simple guy, a sailor with an independent streak that prompts him to do the right thing even when it's not the easy thing. It's long and a bit meandering, but I do indeed remember that clearly remember the ending. That look on his face as he realizes he's not going to make, and those last words, "I was home. What happened? What the hell happened?"

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I love McQueen, and he's what I considered to be a "face actor." In other words, he's someone who can reveal volumes by a single expression, or let you know what he's thinking or feeling by raising his brow or squinting his eyes. Love all the movies listed above with Steve, and I've only recently seen The Cincinnati Kid (1965). He was fine in that, and as it was a movie where playing poker for a living loomed large in the plot, he, being of the "showing what he thought on his face" school, admirably held a stone face in the poker games, not revealing his hand by any move or expression. However in the rest of the movie, he certainly showed what he was thinking, as he had Ann-Margret and Tuesday Weld to play with.

I'll second Nevada Smith, The Sand Pebbles, and The Getaway as personal favorites. The Reivers and Papillon are also favorites of mine. I love The Magnificent Seven, and even though it was an action piece, it had great dialogue and quite a bit of it coming from McQueen, who got a lot of the best lines and irritated the heck out of Yul Brynner, with the two competing in scenes by doing certain gestures or looks to try to steal the scene from each other.
The Great Escape is a wonderful film with an all-star cast, but I love McQueen in it and especially love the last scene of the movie as it involves him and lets what is essentially a downer of a last third end on a whimsical note. He's one of my favorites to be sure.

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