Harper

 

Director Jack Smight

Smight on the set

Screenwriter William Goldman

HARPER                    B                                                                                                                 USA  (121 mi)  1966  ‘Scope  d: Jack Smight

Just an infinitely lingering disease…                                                                                          —Susan Harper (Janet Leigh), referring to Harper walking out the door as she angrily sticks a fork into the egg yolks she had been cooking for him

Your husband keeps lousy company, Mrs. Sampson, as bad as there is in LA.  And that’s as bad as there is.                                                                                                                                          —Lew Harper (Paul Newman)

By the mid 60’s the private eye genre was dead in the water after Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and this film more or less revived it, as it was relegated to television shows like 77 Sunset Strip, Peter Gunn, Hawaiian Eye, Honey West, and Johnny Staccato, which are just a few of the better known shows that began in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.  The template for Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) and Polanski’s CHINATOWN (1974), with Elliot Gould and Jack Nicholson channeling Newman, not Bogart, in these mood driven private eye flicks set in Los Angeles where the larger-than-life atmosphere of the seamy city itself swells to become one of the leading characters.  It would be hard not to mention Lee Marvin in John Boorman’s Point Blank (1967), whose single-minded purpose he shares, similarly offering a nihilistic sense of despair in one of the most extraordinarily bleak visions of Los Angeles.  Curiously, Johnny Mandel wrote the musical score for both.  One could add Steve McQueen’s Bullitt (1968) or Eastwood’s DIRTY HARRY (1971) to that list as well, with both set in San Francisco, as this film predates the rebirth of cool and sophisticated crime thrillers, using arrogant, updated modernized characters who are sick of the world and sarcastically throw off memorable one-liners with ease, fully integrated into the complexities of wealth, corruption, and urban ennui.  Not exactly film noir, the film instead exploits the lifestyles of the wealthy, featuring the Beverly House in Beverly Hills (Legendary Beverly House, Where JFK and Jackie O. ...), later used as the home of movie producer Jack Woltz (John Marley) in THE GODFATHER (1972), with Italian style columns and statues leading to the backyard pool, creating an idealized picture of decadence for Lauren Bacall, the crippled wife of millionaire Ralph Sampson, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) A Poor Thing But Mine Own YouTube (3:48), or Harper’s car, an old beat up black-top gray/silver Porsche 356 A Speedster (one of only 140 made), perhaps a 1956 model which was the predecessor to the 911 series, which he can take for a spin off road at a moment’s notice.  In addition, there is prevalent use of Malibu beach on Southern California’s Pacific Coast Highway, but also fully integrated after hours joints that highlight the quirkiness of the youth movement in the mid 60’s, with the Shindig! and Hullabaloo style dancers.  Paul Newman plays gum chewing Lew Harper, changing the last name from the Ross Macdonald novel of 1949, The Moving Target (they only bought the rights to one book, not the character franchise), where private investigator Lew Archer, unlike Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade or Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, was not so much a man of action as he was a cerebral thinker who figured things out by listening to people, often times feigning a character in order to interact with unsuspecting witnesses.  Following the success of earlier movies THE HUSTLER (1961) and Hud (1963), it was Newman who endorsed the name change from Archer to Harper, continuing a series of 60’s movies beginning with the letter “H,” which also included HOMBRE (1967).  One quirky gesture to his personality is creating characters on the phone when he calls his separated wife, Janet Leigh, who is tired of his false promises and quick disappearances and wants a divorce, but by using a fake personality he can actually hear her voice and talk with her awhile, even if it’s something nonsensical that he completely made up.  This is an endearing aspect to his nature, as otherwise he’s all business.  

Screenwriter William Goldman had long been an admirer of Ross Macdonald (the pseudonym used by Kenneth Millar), especially his Lew Archer novels, filled with melancholy at a disappointing world, writing eighteen Archer novels between 1949 and 1976, and a handful of short story collections, but despite being one of the most prolific and admired of all twentieth-century American crime novelists, his work remains largely untouched by filmmakers.  Known for adding psychological depth to the detective genre, Goldman offered to write an adaptation, where this early script was tight and amusing, with Newman acknowledging that Harper was one of his favorite characters to play, becoming a box office hit, eventually earning Academy Awards for his screenplays of BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID (1969), the likeable buddy movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford, and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN (1976), a Woodward and Bernstein journalistic exposé of the Watergate era.  “Well, you’re not very hip... but you’ve got cop’s eyes.”  While completely unconvincing as an addict, jazz singer Betty Frayley’s (Julie Harris) description of Harper lures him into a kidnapping scheme, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) You've Got Cops' Eyes - TCM  YouTube (4:14), where Lauren Bacall’s drunk but filthy rich husband goes missing, and she could care less, as she’s more interested in inheriting his millions, so she hires Harper to find him, not exactly losing a tear over it.  Add to the equation Miranda (Pamela Tiffin), the scantily clad, drop dead gorgeous daughter who’s not exactly broken up over daddy’s disappearance either.  Instead she’s dancing on the diving board without a care in the world as poolboy gigolo and Sampson’s personal pilot Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner) looks on with a mixture of boredom and cynicism, apparently a reflection of that LA state of mind, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) I'm A Very Modern Type Fellow YouTube (3:10).  From this family love fest Harper must determine the rest, starting with an utterly captivating performance by Fay Estabrook (Shelly Winters), an aging movie star who can’t stop drinking and eating, a lethal combination in show business, (“She got fat” revels Wagner) but her charming performance pokes fun at her own weight problem.  Harper feeds her liquor to get a good look around her house, as she’s a drinking partner of the missing husband and the gauche astrological designer of his gaudy bachelor pad on the side.  But he runs into her slimy gun toting husband Dwight Troy (Robert Webber), making a hasty retreat.  Not so complex as it is perpetually perplexing, there are enough twists and turns here to keep anyone’s head on a swivel, but it reveals a dense landscape steeped in murky atmosphere.  As he gets closer to the scene of the crime and its major players, Harper discovers what he’s always suspected, a world of greed and corruption have replaced long-lost dreams and ambitions, where Los Angeles becomes associated with a vibrant sense of artificiality and empty sterile space, little more than a façade for what’s lurking underneath. 

In a contemporary homage to Humphrey Bogart and THE BIG SLEEP (1946), which incidentally also starred Lauren Bacall, director Jack Smight was mostly a director of television dramas, which impressed Newman enough to want to work with him, but others found him lacking confidence on the set, requiring the constant presence of his reassuring wife, but it was a strong cast and a well-written story, packed full of scintillating dialogue, where the cynical and overly detached Newman is effortlessly cool with his constant wisecracks, literally carrying the picture in a film that helped establish his reputation as one of the screen’s biggest stars, never getting rattled, even as he constantly finds himself drawn into a complicated web of deceit in an underworld of trouble.  But there are little compassionate touches that make him feel more familiar, like living out of his office, where he dunks his head in a sinkful of ice cubes to rouse himself awake in the opening sequence, something he repeated in THE STING (1973), or re-using day-old coffee grinds out of the garbage when he discovers he’s run out, so he’s an ordinary guy in that sense, ill-equipped to be living on his own, but by the time he steps out the door he looks like a million bucks.  The role became so associated with Newman that he would play Harper nine years later in THE DROWNING POOL (1975).  Having won a Tony for his lead role in the original Broadway production of Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, the straightlaced Arthur Hill as gun-toting lawyer Albert Graves is Newman’s best friend, an old war buddy, seen doing isometric exercises at his desk when introduced, normally smart and dependable, but he has a weakness for Miranda, with Harper acknowledging he’s old enough to be her grandfather.  Imaginatively shot in ‘Scope by Conrad Hall, who disliked the artificial style of Hollywood lighting, favoring a naturalistic or impressionist approach, making clever use of offbeat locations as well as dangerous and eccentric characters, including Strother Martin as the leader of nutty religious order “Temple Of The Clouds” that covers as an illegal human trafficking operation, Harper (1966) -- (Movie Clip) Disciples For Supper YouTube (4:04). Equally clever, the man who hired Phillip Marlowe in THE BIG SLEEP was confined to a wheelchair, as is Lauren Bacall, the one hiring Harper in this film.  The addition of Janet Leigh in the ex-wife scenes may seem superfluous, as they were not in the novel, and this sort of thing would never have happened in 40’s film noir, but they add a mysterious vulnerability to Harper’s personality, as we see his continued devotion to her, not ready to let her go, still in love, apparently, whatever that’s worth, and he’s perfectly willing to try to repair the damage, though that train left the station ages ago, and all he’s left with is just a pipe dream.  This humanization of his world-weary character offers a sense of moral decency, beautifully contrasted against an underground cesspool of criminal entrepreneurs, where Los Angeles is seen as a feverish den of illicit immorality, all supposedly tucked carefully out of sight, where Harper is forced to look head-on into the gloom and doom of society’s lost ideals.  Paul Newman’s last line in Hud (1963) would seem appropriate here:  “This world is so full of crap, a man’s gonna get into it sooner or later whether he’s careful or not.”    

Watch Harper Full Movie Online Free With English Subtitles  entire film may be seen on Fshare TV (2:00:48)

In Cold Blood

Author Truman Capote

IN COLD BLOOD                A-                   

USA  (134 mi)  1967  ‘Scope  d: Richard Brooks

The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”  Some seventy miles east of the Colorado border, the countryside, with its hard blue skies and desert-clear air, has an atmosphere that is rather more Far West than Middle West. The local accent is barbed with a prairie twang, a ranch-hand nasalness, and the men, many of them, wear narrow frontier trousers, Stetsons, and high-heeled boots with pointed toes. The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.

—Truman Capote, first paragraph from the opening chapter, The Last to See Them Alive, from In Cold Blood, 1966

Who so sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. 

—Genesis 9:6 (mis-identified in the film as Genesis 9:12), spoken by the Prosecutor (Will Geer)

It all began with a brief piece in The New York Times, from Holcolmb, Kansas on November 16, 1959:  “A wealthy wheat farmer, his wife and their two young children were found shot to death today in their home. They had been killed by shotgun blasts at close range after being bound and gagged… There were no signs of a struggle, and nothing had been stolen. The telephone lines had been cut.”  Author Truman Capote happened to take a special interest in the incident, enough for him to travel to Kansas to investigate the case, especially after the killers, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith were arrested six weeks after the murders.  Capote eventually compiled 8000 pages of notes and spent six years working on the book through the trial, conviction, and long appeal process, but after they were executed by hanging in April, 1965, the story was initially released 5 months later in a four-part installment in The New Yorker magazine and was an instant success.  The true crime or “non-fiction” novel was released in January of the following year, considered a landmark work, one of the first of its kind (following by 9 years the publication of Argentinean journalist Rodolfo Walsh’s 1957 book Operación Masacre, an exposé on the military coup and ousting of Argentine President Juan Perón) and perhaps the most successful ever, where despite its claims of authenticity, being a true account of what happened, Capote admittedly took poetic license by adding scenes that never happened while also recreating dialogue.  Capote conducted interviews with both men after they were convicted, developing a particularly close relationship with Perry Smith, where rumors persist they may have developed a sexual bond together, developing a special fascination with the more tender and sensitive side of a brutal killer.  Capote reportedly remarked, “It’s as if Perry and I grew up in the same house.  And one day he stood up and went out the back door, while I went out the front.” 

One of the more critical voices *against* the book was from fellow Southern author Tom Wolfe in a 1976 essay called Pornoviolence, calling it sadistic and sensational, where he attributes a growing trend in the media to glorify violence as a way of satiating the audience, citing Tobe Hooper’s film THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE (1974) and Capote’s book In Cold Blood, arguing that in the absence of mystery, since we already know the outcome, Capote provides gruesome and salacious details, reducing the work to little more than lurid sensationalism.  Certainly violence in American movies rose to new heights with the release of Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), told sympathetically from the point of view of the outlaws, adding folksy humor with bullets and death, where despite the gratuitous violence, their murderous tendencies are secondary to the power of their performances which endear them to the public, becoming part of American folklore, much like the extraordinary performances seen throughout THE GODFATHER (1972).  Even James Cagney in White Heat (1949) is as entertaining as they come, and his sheer willpower dominates the picture, which is what endears him to audiences even as they know he’s a loathsome psychotic killer who probably deserves the electric chair.  BONNIE AND CLYDE was a sensation, however, where Time magazine called it the “Movie of the Decade,” nominated for 10 Academy Awards.  Nonetheless, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther’s response was to call it “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick that treats the depredations of that sleazy pair as though they were full of fun and frolic.”  Crowley was asked to retire later that same year, as he was simply out of step with the radically changing expectations of new movie audiences that also adored the minimalist romanticism of The Graduate (1967). 

In Cold Blood received more notoriety as a book than as a film, hailed as an acclaimed masterpiece prior to release, where the pre-publication earnings totaled something like 2 million dollars, which would suggest Capote was paid approximately $15 per word.  Possessed with a near inhuman power of recall, Capote’s skill always lay in his meticulously thorough detail, put to good use here displaying superb journalistic skills in an exhaustive account of the senseless murder of the entire Clutter family on their farm in Holcomb, Kansas (population 270), where Hickock (Scott Wilson) and Smith (Robert Blake) netted only $40 dollars for their efforts, substantially less than the $10,000 score they were expecting.   What captured the nation’s attention was how such a horribly gruesome crime could take place in America’s heartland with no hint of a comprehensible motive.  What Capote provided along with the criminal exposé was a piece of Americana, a time capsule landscape portrait of rural America, picking up every detail of life in a small community on what may as well be the far edge of the world.  Much like Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, published in 1955, Capote’s highly subjective writing style unleashes his power of observation using flashbacks, fragmented memories, or psychologically traumatic moments to alter the sense of time, accentuating brief moments, slowing down the pace, drawing sympathy from scenes of a character’s childhood while also revealing the vast expanse of an empty landscape that seems to last forever.  At least in part a road movie, as the two men are constantly on the run, there is a neverending stream of motel rooms, endless night highways, wayside drive-ins, and nondescript towns with no names, where perhaps we’ll see a lone railway stop as these aimless drifters pass through without any sense of where they are.  Told out of sequence in a near documentary style, one of the most effective scenes comes on the vibrant streets of Kansas City, watching how easily Hickock blends into the locale using small town charm as he operates his check bouncing scheme collecting a quick buck during the height of the Eisenhower 50’s, where he plays upon the perceived security and good natured kindness of the store clerks and uses that against them, in much the same way as they simply walked into the unlocked door of the Clutter farmhouse. 

Devastatingly low-key, much of it shot on actual site locations, perhaps the best cinematic technique is how the director brilliantly structures the scenes detailing the crime itself, leading us up to the moment without actually showing the murders, then backtracking into the lives of the murderers, making them the focus of the movie, while the book spends more time developing the individual characters of the Clutter family.  Brooks returns later to what the audience doesn’t initially see, where the full graphic effect of the crime is horrifying.  Neighborly trust is something to exploit, much like Nabokov’s young siren, which raises a profoundly interesting moral dilemma, as throughout the film Hickock calls Smith honey or baby or sweetie, all with sexual connotations, suggesting from a jail perspective that Smith may exhibit gay or feminine characteristics.  While Hickock brags of his sexual exploits, Smith recoils in fear, recalling how his mother was beaten savagely by his father for being caught sleeping with another man, suggesting a possible lack of sexual prowess.  It is only when Hickock makes advances on Nancy Clutter (Brenda Currin), a teenage girl, that Smith becomes enraged at his despicable behavior, exerting “I despise people who can’t control themselves,” which kick-starts his aggression against the otherwise helpless Clutter family.  There’s an interesting use of a police psychologist, Paul Stewart as Lee Jensen, who acts as a writer’s voice of conscience throughout, continually questioning the existence of moral reason and striving for psychological clarity even in seemingly senseless cases, “How can a perfectly sane man create an absolutely crazy act?”  By the end, there’s a melancholic cloud of doom that suggests a lack of closure or finality, where despite the riches and prosperity of the nation, all we’re left with is a pervasive sadness and emptiness filled with haunting, lingering thoughts about the senselessness of it all, where there’s no reason to believe capital punishment has any effect whatsoever on the criminal behavior of people hopped up on drugs (linked to 80% of prison inmates, Drugs or Alcohol Linked to 80% of Inmates - New York Times), enraged by jealousy, or driven for whatever motives to carry out completely senseless acts of violence.