--- title: "The Sundowners" year: 1960 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-sundowners" fi1m_score: 74 critics_score: 69 critics_reviews: 5 published: "2026-09-20T03:53:20.720566+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T03:53:49.633236+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Sundowners (1960) Directed by Fred Zinnemann · 2h 13m · MPA NR · Drama, Adventure **Fi1m score: 74** · Critics 69 (early) from 5 reviews *In a sentence:* Two hours of Robert Mitchum refusing to buy a farm, and we nearly sided with him > Fred Zinnemann takes Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr into the Australian outback and gives them one argument to have for 133 minutes: keep moving or settle down. It is warm, well acted and too long, and the acting wins. ## Synopsis Australia in the 1920s. Paddy Carmody (Robert Mitchum), a drover, moves his wife Ida (Deborah Kerr) and their young son Sean (Michael Anderson Jr.) from job to job in a covered wagon, camping wherever the sun goes down. Ida has been putting money aside and wants to buy a farm and stop. Paddy wants to keep moving and changes the subject whenever the farm comes up. He takes a contract to drive a mob of sheep across country and hires Rupert Venneker (Peter Ustinov), an Englishman with a naval past and elaborate manners who has never sat on a horse for long. The drive brings dust, a bushfire and the first open quarrel about the farm. At the far end waits a sheep station, a shearing shed where the men are paid by the fleece, and the hotel-keeper Mrs Firth (Glynis Johns). ## Review Fred Zinnemann took a crew to Australia and made a film in which not much happens except a marriage. Paddy Carmody wants to keep moving. His wife Ida wants to stop. Isobel Lennart’s screenplay, from Jon Cleary’s novel, gives 133 minutes to that one disagreement and does not settle it cheaply. It is a good film, easy to like and slightly too long, worth your evening if you can sit with people who talk over a campfire rather than shoot across one. Mitchum plays Paddy with a looseness that looks like ease with a whole continent. He drinks, he bets, he sings, and he says no to the farm by asking what is for tea. He and Kerr have the shorthand of a couple twenty years married: she knows the subject has been changed and files it. A train passes the wagon and Ida looks up at a woman in a compartment window, powdered and hatted, who looks back. Kerr puts a hand to her own hair and does nothing else. We had not expected to be moved by this film, and we were, and it was that hand. Peter Ustinov’s Rupert Venneker is the comic engine, an Englishman who was once a ship’s officer and has decided not to be anything since. He signs on as a drover, rides badly, and talks about the sea. Ustinov lets Venneker be fond of the Carmodys and a little frightened of what fondness might commit him to. Glynis Johns, as the hotel-keeper Mrs Firth, arrives once the drive is done and sets about him with the directness of a woman who has run a bar for years. Their scenes are the funniest in the film, and they are about the same thing: whether a man built around leaving can be talked into staying. Jack Hildyard shot it on location, and it is dust-coloured for long stretches, red earth and grey-green scrub under a sky with too much room in it. He keeps the camera low so the sheep fill the bottom of the frame like slow water. The bushfire is the one sequence built for a big screen: smoke first, then a line of flame along the ridge, then men and dogs working the mob through it. We held our breath, faintly annoyed with ourselves, because the film had spent an hour saying it was not that kind of film. Dimitri Tiomkin’s score is brass and bounding strings, and it is too much; it hums the main theme under conversations that wanted silence. Elizabeth Haffenden gives Ida faded cottons and one good dress, and the dress says more about what she has given up than the dialogue does. The length is the fault. Jack Harris cuts at the film’s own walking pace, which suits the drive and lets the shearing shed run on well past the point where we understood how the men were paid. The second half takes a turn we will not describe, except to say the film takes its time getting there and then hurries the consequence. Twenty minutes could go and it would be the same film. Against Zinnemann’s own record it is baggy. [*High Noon*](https://film.one/film/high-noon) has not a wasted minute. [*From Here to Eternity*](https://film.one/film/from-here-to-eternity) kept a dozen people in the air and dropped none. What he buys with the time here is faces: Mitchum listening, Kerr deciding not to say something, Ustinov working out whether he has just been insulted. See it at home on an evening with nothing after it, and set the volume so that Tiomkin is a rumour rather than a companion. Then argue about the farm. By the end we were not sure whose side we were on, which Paddy would count as a win. *Fi1m score 74, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say With only 5 reviews in so far, the lean is warm. Most critics single out Robert Mitchum’s easy, generous turn as the wandering Paddy Carmody and his rapport with Deborah Kerr, with Peter Ustinov’s supporting work also noted, and several credit Zinnemann’s direction for finding the inner lives of hardworking people against the Australian landscape. The dissent comes from The New Yorker, which admires the countryside and the casting, animal and human, but finds the thin story of a family’s roaming life not up to its incidentals. A later reviewer at The Playlist thinks it runs a little long and old-fashioned, though absorbing all the same. ### Reviews we read (5) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (90/100, inferred): The critic hails the picture as an achievement thanks to Zinnemann's poetic direction that reveals characters' inner lives, alongside Isobel Lennart's perceptive screenplay and strong performances from Mitchum, Kerr, and Ustinov. [Read](https://variety.com/1959/film/reviews/the-sundowners-2-1200419541/) - **Film Comment**, Steven Mears (80/100, inferred): The critic praises Robert Mitchum's warm, nuanced performance as the itinerant Australian patriarch Paddy Carmody, highlighting his chemistry with Deborah Kerr and the film's authentic depiction of hardworking people. Zinnemann's direction is noted for its John Ford-like flavor in an Australian setting, with strong supporting turns from Kerr and Peter Ustinov adding emotional depth to the story of family wanderlust versus stability. [Read](https://www.filmcomment.com/tcm-diary-robert-mitchum-x-2/) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (70/100, inferred): The critic finds the film an especially appropriate Christmas entertainment, praising its colorful and lively outdoor scenes shot on location in Australia along with the deeply poignant human involvements between characters. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1960/12/09/archives/film-on-australians-opens-at-music-hall.html) - **The New Yorker**, Roger Angell (30/100, inferred): The review calls the Australian countryside and wildlife stunning and credits Zinnemann with perceptive casting of animal extras and winning two-legged players, but regrets that the thin story about a family's wandering life is not up to the incidentals. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1960/12/17/345-flat) - **The Playlist**, The Playlist Staff (75/100, inferred): The critic finds the film a remarkably effective and absorbing low-key portrait of a family and marriage in the Australian outback, despite being a little too long and unhip. They single out the strong chemistry and performances, especially Robert Mitchum's generous turn as the feckless nomad and Deborah Kerr's role. [Read](https://theplaylist.net/the-10-most-essential-robert-mitchum-movies-20150429/3/) ## Details - **Director:** Fred Zinnemann - **Director:** Fred Zinnemann - **Screenplay:** Isobel Lennart - **Novel:** Jon Cleary - **Cinematography:** Jack Hildyard - **Editor:** Jack Harris - **Music:** Dimitri Tiomkin - **Costume design:** Elizabeth Haffenden - **Producer:** Gerry Blattner - **Cast:** Deborah Kerr as Ida Carmody; Robert Mitchum as Paddy Carmody; Peter Ustinov as Rupert Venneker; Glynis Johns as Mrs. Firth; Dina Merrill as Jean Halstead; Chips Rafferty as Quinlan; Michael Anderson Jr. as Sean Carmody; Lola Brooks as Liz Brown - **Runtime:** 2h 13m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 8 December 1960 - **Genres:** Drama, Adventure - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZD5N4oWbQM4 ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: free - Amazon Prime Video: rent $2.99, sd - Apple TV: rent $3.99, sd - Apple TV: buy $9.99, sd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $9.99, sd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, AU, CA, CH, DE, ES, GB, IE, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1961: Best Actress (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (nominated); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Sunday Too Far Away* (1975): The Australian shearing shed done from the inside, with the sweat left in. - *The Overlanders* (1946): Chips Rafferty drives cattle across the top of Australia; the country is the story. - *Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison* (1957): Mitchum and Kerr alone on an island, working out the same quiet shorthand. - *Days of Heaven* (1978), Fi1m 85: Itinerant workers, a wheat harvest and a fire, shot in the last light of the day. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/days-of-heaven.md) - *Nomadland* (2020): A woman who will not settle, and a film that declines to tell her she is wrong. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. 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