HARPER (1966)

Paul Newman had a big hit playing a laid-back L.A. Private Eye in this lax detective yarn taken from an old Ross MacDonald novel. (Note lead character ‘Archer’ renamed ‘Harper’ to go with all those other Newman ‘H’ titles.) With an All-Star, overqualified cast; Conrad Hall lensing; and debut William Goldman script, it ought to be better. Blame Jack Smight’s faceless direction, not an ounce of personality in it, with poorly handled action sequences.* But Newman also earns a share with his twitchy, unmodulated, self-regarding perf, as if jealous of all the eccentric/comic/threatening turns going on around him. Why should they have all the fun while I play straightman? Charged by wheelchair-bound Lauren Bacall to find her missing husband (kidnapped?; dead?), the puzzle holds few surprises and the suspects a one-note lot with little to do other than wait for Newman to come by for an interview. (Goldman unable to handle more than two or three characters on screen at the same time with comfort.) Some nice L.A. atmosphere comes thru, especially in the darker scenes, but lenser Hall phones a lot in and the process work is remarkably poor for the period. Still, if you want to see what passed for light, sophisticated fun, and corrupt West Coast glamor amid the changing mores of mid-‘60s Hollywood (note the morally ambiguous ending), the film has its moments.

DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Altman’s THE LONG GOODBYE/’73 and Roman Polanski’s CHINATOWN/’74 made films like this obsolete.

SCRWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *There’s something hidden in the blue-eyed stare of Robert Wagner’s boyish but aging suspect. (Gay in the novel?) A less visually constipated director would have caught some sort of interior battle going on between his gaze & the famous Newman baby blues. Smight completely misses it.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In another episode of Clueless Hollywood Cooking 101, Janet Leigh (with little to do as Harper’s ex) tries to hold on to her man ‘the morning after’ with a bacon & egg breakfast she fries up in an ‘unseasoned’ cast iron pan the prop department must have brought on set straight from the box.