CATCH A CLASSIC
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Legendary actor Robert Mitchum is equally as remembered for playing heroes as he is for playing bad guys, and two of his iconic performances — one from each category — are featured in tonight’s double feature on Turner Classic Movies. First is Out of the Past (pictured) (1947), director Jacques Tourneur’s famous film noir. Mitchum plays scuffling P.I. Jeff Bailey, who gets a sure-money job from shady high-roller Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas): Track down
and retrieve the mistress (Jane Greer) who skipped town with $40,000 of his money. Finding his target in Mexico, Bailey falls for her, but his plan to make them new lives leads to stunning betrayals. Next, Mitchum is absolutely chilling as tattooed-knuckled religious fanatic Harry Powell, one of the screen’s most unforgettable villains, in director Charles Laughton’s superb The Night of the Hunter (1955). Powell marries a fragile widow (Shelley Winters) to try to learn where her late husband hid a large sum of cash from a robbery. When his plans are uncovered by her terrified young children, it begins a pursuit that becomes a mesmerizing rendering of the battle between good and evil. Lillian Gish costars in a terrific performance.