Detective's Story

While perhaps not as taut as "The Maltese Falcon", but just as intricate as "Chinatown" or "L.A. Confidential", "Harper" is an under-acknowledged gem of a film that's as cool as it's leading man. It's with this film that I began to get a better appreciation of Paul Newman, easily one of the most versatile leading men Hollywood has ever produced. Here, he plays Harper as something of a SOB, always looking at the paycheck as his top priority. Not that the pond he has to swim in is any better; a frigid woman client, a hot-to-trot teen daughter, a duplicitous servant, an attorney who's the closest thing to a friend Harper has, a washed-up nightclub singer, her sinister, Texan husband, and a cult leader aren't exactly what one would call charming dinner company. It also doesn't help that the guy Harper's trying to find isn't even liked by the wife who hired him (thanks to the under-appreciated fire and spirit of Lauren "Betty" Bacall, one of the true originals) or anybody else. The only thing they like is his money.

Like a good boxer, the plot bobs and weaves, never letting the audience know when the next surprise is coming until it's too late. While Chandler is cited when talking about this film, it also makes me think of Hammett's many, many tales of the Continental Op. Not everybody always tells the truth, not everything is what it seems, and the best laid plans of mice and men (to paraphrase Bobby Burns) wind up falling through. Some people may not have the patience for this film in our razzle-dazzle, in-your-face age of entertainment, but for those who prefer their movies with a soft, subtle touch, this is one for you.

This is very much like a late 1940s film noir, except it's filmed in the mid 1960s. It has that same edgy dialog and feel to it as private eye "Lew Harper" goes looking for a missing man. His character is based on Ross McDonald's best-selling P.I. "Lew Archer."

In "Harper," all the characters are suspicious and they vary from suave "Allan Taggart" (Robert Wagner) to the coquettish late teen "Miranda Sampson" (Pamela Tiffin) to a lawyer "Albert Graves" (Arthur Hill) who's infatuated with the hot teen and also carries a gun. Then there's the overweight has-been entertainer "Fay Esterbrook" (Shelly Winters), the druggie jazz singer "Betty Fraley" (Julie Harris), the New Age scam artist "Claude" (Strother Martin) and a bunch of gangsters and thugs who are the obvious targets. Of them all, I though Winters was the biggest hoot.

Along the way, Newman wins all the verbal bouts but loses the physical contests. He zings everyone with some great put-downs, but takes a physical beating a few times, too. He sports a nice shiner in the last half of the film.

This film will put you smack into the time period, when people danced "The Frug" and referred to cops as "the fuzz." People were starting to wear Beatle-type haircuts, although you'd never find Newman giving in to that counterculture fad. In here, at least, he's old school, tough, relentless and suspicious of everyone......which, at it turns out, is as it should be.

The DVD is now part of the Paul Newman Collection and it's shown with a very sharp 2.35:1 ratio transfer, very much showing off Conrad Hall's cinematography. Johnny Mandel's music score adds to the "coolness" of this film, too.

This I don't understand-

For years I've believed in how Elliot Gould's Philip Marlowe in "The Long Goodbye" was the first effort at making a P.I. character a whacked out loser with a post-modern attitude. Yet, I'm watching "Harper" today and my jaw is bounding off the floor like a yo-yo. Because in the lead role Paul Newman gives one of the ten best performances I've ever seen, and maybe the best comedic one from a non-comedian actor ever done. Even at the two thirds mark, when 99% of the screenplays usually have nothing new to say about their characters, Lew Harper was still leaving me damn near breathless. How "Cool Hand Luke" is more famous than "Harper", which is never mentioned anywhere as the king-size sleeper it is, bewilders me entirely.

Until CHINATOWN, HARPER was probably the most mature private eye movie Hollywood ever produced. Paul Newman is dynamite as the scrappy, somewhat goofy title character, hired by wealthy Lauren Bacall to find her missing husband. Newman gets more than he bargained for as he runs into one flaky character after another: Shelley Winters as a bloated former child star, Julie Harris as a junkie, Pamela Tiffen as Bacall's extremely bitchy stepdaughter, Robert Wagner as a private-eye wannabe, and, best of all, Strother Martin as nasty, new-age guru. Not much of what happens really ties together, but it's all very fun to watch. The performers are all terrific and the pseudo jazz score is another plus. Featuring Arthur Hill, Robert Webber and Janet Leigh, underutilized as Newman's frustrated ex-wife.

It's a "good" thing. From the go-go music and dancing, to the fearless overacting, to the multiple cameos (that Shelley Winters as an over-eating amorous drunk - wow!) by a who's who of famous actors, this film has everything but snappy editing. Enjoyable mainly for its unpredictability and seeing actors given free reign with their characters (Robert Wagner doing a bad James Cagney out of the blue!).

Enjoyable. If I had reviewed this in the 60's I'd have given it a "5". In 2002, I give it an "8".