The Drowning Pool

 

Director Stuart Rosenberg

Rosenberg with Paul Newman

THE DROWNING POOL           B                                                                                                USA  (108 mi)  1975  ‘Scope  d: Stuart Rosenberg

You have no talent for surrender.                                                                                                    —Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward)

It’s always a treat to see Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward work together, having met in 1953 while both were working in the Broadway production of Picnic, making their first film together in Martin Ritt’s THE LONG, HOT SUMMER (1958), an adaptation of three William Faulkner stories, where the two got married in Las Vegas during the production, also working together in Ritt’s Paris Blues (1961), a tribute to jazz, with Newman directing her in Rachel, Rachel (1968), an extremely quiet and unassuming film that is completely devoted to Woodward, as it showcases her extraordinary talent.  They were a romantic Hollywood couple that left Hollywood to remain a couple, sharing a love unlike any other Hollywood couple, remaining together from the time they were married in 1958 until the day Newman died in 2008, spanning fifty years, with three children, eloquently described by Newman, “I don’t like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true.  I have steak at home.  Why should I go out for hamburger?”  All told they made 10 films together, none of which are household names, which suggests they were willing to take chances with more off-beat material, like Stuart Rosenberg’s WUSA (1970), a confounding yet fascinating character study that was decimated by critics, a discussion on race relations and political hypocrisy, made during the heyday of those 70’s paranoid political conspiracy thrillers.  Both that film and this one were both shot in New Orleans, but this doesn’t utilize the uniqueness of the culture or the setting, which are largely overlooked, written by a successive trio of writers, Walter Hill, Lorenzo Semple, and Tracy Keenan Wynn, transporting the seedy world of an LA private eye to Louisiana, conceived as a loose sequel to Harper (1966), the only sequel Newman ever appeared in, reviving his role as a quick-witted detective becoming embroiled in a treacherous murder mystery at the behest of an old flame in Woodward.  An early scene, shot in the shadows of chandeliers from an antique store, has a rare intimacy between the two of them that the rest of the film never lives up to, but those captured moments together add to the allure of the picture.  Adapting the second of Kenneth Millar, aka Ross Macdonald’s 18 novels of private detective Lew Archer, the author offers a panoramic tour of Southern California in the 1950’s, even prowling the suburbs, in particular his home of Santa Barbara (renamed to Santa Teresa), corresponding to the rapid postwar growth of the valleys and coastal communities, yet some of that is lost in this new landscape, which is given a contemporary setting with considerably more action added, as the mood switches quickly from contemplative to grimly active.  Before the story is finished, characters will be shot, drowned, drugged, beaten, and tortured, all in the name of greed and vanity, as it feels like something Oedipal in a classical Greek tragedy style happening here.  

Newman also worked with Rosenberg in the zany and quirky existential road movie/western Pocket Money (1972) shot in Mexico with Lee Marvin, a small gem of a film written by none other than Terrence Malick, and before that they made the extremely popular COOL HAND LUKE (1967), where the outcast individualism struck a chord with mainstream America.  Newman was nominated for an Oscar in five different decades, including three nominations, and a win, after he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1985.  An enticing quote from the novel that is not in the movie:

I turned on my back and floated, looking up at the sky, nothing around me but cool clear Pacific, nothing in my eyes but long blue space.  It was as close as I ever got to cleanliness and freedom, as far as I ever got from all the people.  They had jerrybuilt the beaches from San Diego to the Golden Gate, bulldozed super-highways through the mountains, cut down a thousand years of redwood growth, and built an urban wilderness in the desert.  They couldn’t touch the ocean.  They poured their sewage into it, but it couldn’t be tainted.

Lured into a stately antebellum mansion with servants galore and Spanish moss dripping from the old oak trees (reportedly filmed at Oaklawn Manor, a famous historical plantation built in the early 1800’s located near Franklin), Harper is hired by Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward), having had a brief yet torrid affair with her six years earlier but she disappeared without a trace, the wife of an emasculated old-money Louisiana aristocrat, James Devereaux (Richard Derr), who idles away his time as an alcoholic, unpublished playwright.  It’s his mother, however, Olivia Devereaux (Coral Browne), who runs the place with an iron fist, tightly controlling the family purse strings, while the family lineage in Beau Rivage has been intact for 175 years, where “the abolition of slavery was viewed as a mild agitation for them.”  Exploring the Southern Gothic theme of dysfunctional family dynamics, with disturbing suggestions of incest, Iris wants him to find out who’s blackmailing her about her extramarital dalliances, suspecting it may be the chauffeur she fired a few days ago, Pat Reavis (Andy Robinson), whose current whereabouts are unknown.  Iris has an enterprising young daughter, Schuyler (Melanie Griffith, just 17 when the film was shot), fresh off her teenage temptress role in Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975) released a month earlier, playing a similarly spoiled and sexually precocious role here, meeting Harper coming out of the shower in his motel room with designs on seducing him, but he doesn’t play along.  When asked about Reavis, she responds with a bemused smile, “He was fun.  Mild psychopaths often are if you don’t cross them.”  Nonetheless, having been seen in her company, he’s rounded up by the overzealous police on child molestation and statutory rape charges, specifically by overenthusiastic Lieutenant Franks (Richard Jaeckel), where he’s warned by Police Chief Broussard (Anthony Franciosa) that he’s in over his head, as the Devereaux’s are a highly influential family in Louisiana.  It’s soon clear that it’s much more than a simple case of blackmail, as Harper is whisked off the street at gunpoint and brought to the home of millionaire oil tycoon J. Hugh Kilbourne (Murray Hamilton), where the brutality is immediately evident, as he trains pit bulls for mortal combat, something he enjoys for fun and leisure, The Drowning Pool (1975) - Lew Harper meets J.J. Kilbourne YouTube (6:56).  What he’s really interested in is the land owned by the Devereaux family, claiming it is oil-rich and worth more than $100 million, so anyone who comes in contact with the family is on his radar.  By nightfall, Olivia Devereaux is discovered dead in the bayou, having been struck in the head with a rake and dropped into the swamp.  Immediately suspecting Reavis, Harper goes searching for him at a roadside bar, hooking up with Gretchen (Linda Haynes), his suspected prostitute girlfriend, and through her he uncovers a lead. 

As he was in Harper, Newman is utterly appealing as the cool-as-ice investigator, while Woodward is quietly introverted and refined, Franciosa puts his spin on the Cajun dialect, while Hamilton is almost leisurely in his enjoyably quirky spin on a villainous role, with Gail Strickland as Kilbourne’s terrified yet deplorably conniving trophy wife Mavis.  Griffith’s character knows no bounds when it comes to moral turpitude, figuring prominently in the outcome, a poisonous “Bad Seed,” while Browne commands great authority in her brief appearance as Woodward’s domineering mother-in-law, her first film after her marriage to actor Vincent Price in 1974.  The plot is extremely convoluted and risks losing all sense at times, but what it really lacks is that tightly cohesive yet snide edge of William Goldman’s screenplay in the first film, where this follow-up is just not in the same class, yet the markedly downbeat and pessimistic tone is fairly typical for 70’s private-eye thrillers, yet here self-interest borders on murderous psychopathy.  It attempts to pay homage to the original with a cutely facetious opening sequence, and a surprise freeze frame finale, but in between there’s a sadistic edge of cruelty and double cross that may not sit well with viewers, with suggestions that for the right price anything can happen, as the stalwarts of the law will turn a blind eye.  The same can’t be said for Harper, as he turns down a highly lucrative, life-altering offer and gets very little in return except the satisfaction that he’s nobody’s patsy.  Nonetheless, things take a dark turn for him as well, as some people refuse to take no for an answer, where it can cost you your life.  The most protracted action sequence takes place in an abandoned sanitarium, where the film’s title refers to some excessive water therapy, as patients would be dressed down with a fire hose.  Things get a little out of whack, getting into the extreme, yet the camera work by Gordon Willis is a definite plus, offering a masterclass on neo-noir color cinematography, taking us right up to the edge, even verging on exploitation while nearly drowning in the murky waters of this treacherous murder mystery, Paul Newman, Gail Strickland in 1975's The Drowning Pool | 4K YouTube (5:28).  All revolving around the secrecy of a little black book, which documents the extent of the fraud and corruption, it ends up in an unexpected place, with Harper simply shrugging his shoulders at the end, as if life never makes sense, until it does, The Drowning Pool | Last Scene & Funny Freeze-Frame Ending YouTube (2:49).  The 70’s was a classic decade for crime flicks, including THE GODFATHER saga, but also Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971), William Friedkin’s THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971), Don Siegel’s DIRTY HARRY (1971), Peter Yates’ The Hot Rock (1972), Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973), John Huston’s CHINATOWN (1974), Alan J. Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974), Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974), Joseph Sargent’s THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974), Arthur Penn’s Night Moves (1975), J. Lee Thompson’s Cape Fear (1975), Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Sidney Pollack’s THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR (1975), Robert Aldrich’s HUSTLE (1975), John Frankenheimer’s FRENCH CONNECTION II (1975), and Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (1973) and Taxi Driver (1976), among others.

The Unloved - The Drowning Pool on Vimeo  video essay by Scout Tafoya, YouTube (10:16)

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)