For a few seconds one evening during Febiofest, it seemed as if a ghost had materialized in the Anděl Village cineplex. Just before the screening of the 1955 American classic Night of the Hunter, Febio officials walked in with ... Robert Mitchum, the star of the film.

Hands-down the coolest customer ever to stride across the silver screen, Mitchum was a Hollywood icon, a smolderingly powerful actor who had an unbroken 55-year career playing everything from war heroes to deranged killers. Night of the Hunter features one of his most memorable roles — Harry Powell, a murderous preacher intent on wringing a secret out of two innocent children.

Mitchum died in 1997, but left behind a lot of his broad-shouldered good looks and easygoing charm in his son Christopher, who was the person introducing the film. He was invited to Prague as part of Febiofest's mini-tribute to his father, a disappointing showing of just four films — two of them so obscure that Chris confessed the next day, "I've never seen them myself."

No matter. The best of his father's 130-plus movies remain landmarks, particularly the seminal film noirs Out of the Past and Cape Fear. Others Chris would have brought, given his choice, include The Sundowners, Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison and Ryan's Daughter.

'We can't interview you'

Chris, 62, has had an impressive acting career himself, much of it overseas. He started in the business not unlike his father, backing into acting work, first as a television extra, then in low-budget Hollywood films. On the first, a motorcycle monster movie called Bigfoot, he was part of the production crew until the lead actor dropped out. "So they talked me into playing the lead," he says. "I agreed, on condition that I could still be the second assistant director."

The roles came steadily after that, leading up a third movie with John Wayne, Big Jake, that made Chris Photoplay magazine's choice for Best New Actor. "You'd think the offers would have come rolling in after that," he says. "But for a year, nothing."

He finally found out why when he went to read for a film called Steelyard Blues. The casting director took one look at him and said, "We can't interview you." She explained that he had become too closely identified with Wayne and his pro-Vietnam war politics, which were anathema in Hollywood.

However, in the interim Chris had done a movie in Spain, Summertime Killer, which turned out to be the country's highest-grossing ever. So he was invited back for what became a 32-year stint making movies in a total of 14 countries throughout Europe and Asia. He made nearly 60 films in all, finally setting aside acting about 10 years ago after a particularly dispiriting reading.

"I come from the old school, where the way you auditioned was you'd go talk to Howard Hawks for an hour," Chris says. "You'd read something, then he'd tell you to do it 180 degrees different — to see if you could, and if you could take direction.

"The last audition I ever went on, there were two kids in their 20s sitting in chairs, one with a video camera. I read some dialogue and they were like, "Okay, thank you, we'll let you know if we're interested.' Then one of them looked at my CV and said, 'Hey, you worked with somebody named John Wayne — was he any relation to the real John Wayne?' That's when I knew it was time to go do something else."

Chris mostly writes now, both screenplays and books. He's had nine films produced overseas, is shopping a couple scripts in the States and currently writing two books. Then there are occasional guest appearances like this one, "representing the family name," he says with a smile.

'Never get caught acting'

And what a name! Robert Mitchum embodied a spirit and attitude that was not only unique in Hollywood, but reflective of the grit and determination that characterized mid-20th century America. He lost his father before he was two, and left home as a teenager during the Great Depression — "because that was one less mouth they had to feed," notes Chris.

Mitchum wandered the country, working odd jobs and riding the rails with the hobos, then got arrested and put on a chain gang in Georgia. He managed to escape, but came home with ankles so badly infected from wearing iron cuffs that doctors wanted to amputate his legs. "His mother said no, and nursed him back to health," Chris says.

When he recovered, Mitchum went on the road again, ending up in Southern California. He returned east to marry his teenage sweetheart (to whom he remained married for 57 years, until his death) and brought her back to California, where after a brief, unhappy stint as a machinist at Lockheed Aircraft he became involved in community theater and soon thereafter Hollywood films.

Chris says he was 7 or 8 years old before he realized what his father did for a living. "I thought RKO [Studios] was just a great place to hang out, where I could go to the prop room and play with models," he says. "Then one day my mom took me to see a Hopalong Cassidy movie. She told me my father was going to be in it, and not to say anything when he came on — which of course I did: 'There's Dad!' — and ..." he makes a sharp motion of a hand being clamped over his mouth.

Chris's stories of a normal home life are in keeping with his father's acting style, most often described as underrated. The elder Mitchum was like a jungle cat on-screen, languid and deliberate in movement and speech, yet always with an air of cool calculation just beneath the surface. It seemed effortless, drawn from instinct rather than the extremes that mark today's ego-driven, scenery-chewing styles.

"One of my father's sayings was, 'Never get caught acting,' " says Chris. "He meant that you should just become the character. People do all these different things now to get into character. My dad knew lots of different people in his life, so he had sources to draw on — but no techniques. He felt the audience should never be aware that you're acting."

'He took it like a man'

Over time, Mitchum developed remarkable range as an actor. He could play a terrifyingly convincing ex-convict bent on revenge (in Cape Fear), then switch gears a few years later to play an impotent Irish schoolteacher with an impeccable brogue (Ryan's Daughter). The common denominator throughout his career was absolute fearlessness, in both his personal and professional life. He never worried, for example, about what playing a disturbing character like Harry Powell might do to his image.

"That was one of my father's favorite films, and he actually wanted to play the part more head-on," says Chris. "The preacher is one evil son of a bitch, and he wanted to play him that way. But [director Charles] Laughton said, 'You can't; you'll never work again. You need to lighten it up.' " The result was a brilliant, unsettling study of a psychopathic split personality, exemplified by the words LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers.

In 1948 Mitchum's personal life took a hit when he was arrested for marijuana possession at a Hollywood party. The bust was a setup — as Chris tells the story, his father walked in the door, was handed a joint, and moments later cops poured out of a back room. After a sensational trial he was given a two-month jail sentence, which had virtually no effect on his popularity.

"There's no question that it played into his bad-boy image," says Chris. "But mainly I think it was the fact that he did his time and took it like a man." (And had a great attitude when he got out, responding to one question about what jail was like with, "It's like Palm Springs without the riffraff.")

In an investigation a couple years later, the bust was officially declared a setup and Mitchum's conviction was expunged. But he always gave the impression that it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other. Mitchum once said of the stories written about him, "They're all true — booze, brawls, broads, all true. Make up some more if you want to."

That was part of his appeal — both on and off the screen, Mitchum always conveyed the sense that he was never impressed by or captive to his fame, and could have walked away from it at any time.

"My dad was embarrassed by his success, actually," says Chris. "I think until the day he died, he thought he would leave L.A. the way he came in, riding on a freight train with some hobos and telling them, 'I used to be a star.' "

There's a brief scene in Night of the Hunter that shows Mitchum with some hobos gathered around a campfire, a common sight during the Depression. What's striking about it is that Mitchum doesn't look like a slumming star; except for his preacher suit, he fits right in.