For me, there are only two candidates for the best English-language film of 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (no surprise there) and Fred Zinnemann’s The Sundowners, a film lauded in its day but shamefully overlooked ever since.  Zinnemann is best remembered as the man who made High Noon (1952) and From Here to Eternity (1953), but he also made the underrated WWII drama The Seventh Cross (1944), featured in my book Screen Savers, as well as the overrated prestige picture known as A Man for All Seasons (1966).  Zinnemann’s two finest films are the exquisite drama The Nun’s Story (1959), which has Audrey Hepburn’s greatest performance, and The Sundowners, a film that defies easy classification.

Reteamed after their big success in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957), Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr surpassed themselves in The Sundowners.  This tale of Australian sheep drovers takes us into its world with impeccable detail and enormous affection for its characters, all so effortlessly.  This is a movie that really breathes.  Mitchum and Kerr are married and have a teenage son; their sheep-droving life keeps them on the move.  (Sundowners are people without homes.)  Zinnemann’s filmmaking is so graceful and vibrant, never hitting a false or pushed note.  

This wonderful movie is about “home,” the yearning to have one, but it’s also about what the term “home” truly means.  This is an honest family entertainment that sustains an easy comic tone.  Episodic in nature, the film is consistently warm, funny, and textured.  It is also one of the great films about marriage, with Mitchum and Kerr not just believably in love but believably living together through good times and bad, big events and small.  Kerr and Mitchum are a sexy couple in a realistic rather than “Hollywood” way.  Not many on-screen marriages have generated this kind of natural heat. 

The great Kerr is superb, and different than she is in any other film.  She’s no elegant lady here (nor is she a “tart,” as she was in Zinnemann’s Eternity), creating a full-bodied portrait of an earthy, hearty woman, tough and sarcastic but also wise and loyal.  And she  brims with love for Mitchum.  He, too, is at his best, utterly credible with his Aussie accent and infectious zest for living.  No sleepy-eyed Mitchum this time around. 

The film offers the further delights of Peter Ustinov and Glynis Johns, plus gorgeous color cinematography from Jack Hildyard and stunning Australian locales.  Among its many spontaneous and awe-inspiring moments, The Sundowners offers a forest fire, a dingo chase, a horse race, and a hilarious sheep-shearing contest.  

The Sundowners received five Oscar nominations, for picture, director, screenplay, actress, and supporting actress.  The big winner that year was The Apartment, a solid choice, but Deborah Kerr and Glynis Johns had the indignity of losing their Oscars to undeserving picks, for this was the year of Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 and Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry.  Taylor did a fine job in a crappy movie but hardly merited an Oscar, while Jones was hopelessly amateurish in her attempt to convince us that she was a prostitute.  Kerr and Johns would have been winners that Oscar could have looked back on with pride.  Best Picture would have been nice, too.