HarperWhat is professionalism? Is it performing one's duties to a client with skill? Is it loyalty? Is it integrity? Where do you draw the line? Harper is a mystery, a detective story about Lew Harper (Paul Newman), who is a detective and is hired to find a missing millionaire named Ralph Sampson. He is offered this job by Sampson's cynical wife, Elaine (Lauren Bacall), after being recommended to her by an old friend of Harper's--and Sampson's lawyer--Albert Graves (Arthur Hill). Harper must navigate this world of the rich, learning about their eccentricities, while performing his job, despite facing an impending divorce from his exasperated wife, Susan (Janet Leigh). Where does Harper's loyalty lie?
|
|
Harper is a detective movie in the vein of Forties-era detective movies like The Big Sleep. (Lauren Bacall's casting is a playful nod to this.) The plot is also very similar to The Big Sleep, at least at the start. Elaine wants to hire Harper to find her husband, assuming that he is having an affair. She avoids going to the police to save the embarrassment of publicity (or so she says). Her stepdaughter is a sexy young woman named Miranda (Pamela Tiffin), who Harper first meets while she is dancing on a diving board in her bikini. She also has a yen for one of the help, Ralph's handsome pilot, Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner), though he claims to have his heart set on someone else. When Harper sets out to track down Ralph, Allan and Miranda tag along at different intervals. During his investigation, Harper discovers a few key clues--as detectives do--that help him put together the puzzle of Ralph's disappearance. But--again, like detectives and detective movies do--that puzzle isn't complete until near the end. There are a few red herrings in Harper, and a few dead end leads. But eventually, Harper applies his acumen and figures out the grand scheme at play. All of this is familiar territory, and that's just what Harper (the movie) sets out to do. It doesn't reinvent the wheel...it just gives the treads the "penny test" to make sure it still holds up for a new audience. Director Jack Smight doesn't deviate from that familiar Sixties-era directorial style, but this isn't a criticism. Rather for Harper, it's a tool to let the audience focus on the story and performances instead of confusing cinematic flourishes, which are less useful for a pure detective story. The exception to this would be the opening credits, which silently establishes that Harper is living in his office, sleeping on the foldout couch, and is either too poor or too distracted to remember to buy coffee. He also wakes himself up by dunking his face in a sink full of ice water, perhaps from a hangover. In fact, a good deal of Harper's investigating involves him going to bars and drinking while "pumping" people of interest for information, usually adopting a speech affectation while doing so. On the whole, Harper is a bit paradoxical. He tells Elaine that he doesn't drink before noon because he is a "new" kind of detective, perhaps intending on deflating her expectations about gumshoes from days gone by. I think that he really does this because he doesn't want to build up too much familiarity with a client. Is this because he is a "professional"? Perhaps, but I think that it also comes from the desire to feel that he is in control of his career and his identity, instead of someone else with money compelling him to behave in the expected way. It's a kind of fixation that clearly has fractured his marriage. In a key scene with Susan late into the film, he goes to her house after being beaten up and (surprisingly) manages to wear down her defenses and seduce her. In the morning, he acts like nothing happened because the job is calling to him once again. He has a responsibility to see it through. But by the time we get to this point, we're asking ourselves why it's so important to him as much as Susan silently does.
Harper's the kind of detective who moves from scene to scene, alternatingly bemused and serious. He chews bubblegum--perhaps as a proxy for brushing his teeth in part, but really its to entice others to letting down their guard. After all, this guy's no cop; he's a cool and mellow cat. (Just what Harper wants them to believe.) He often has a quick reply or retort up his sleeve, predominantly for those within this elite circle who sometimes look down on him. A favorite line comes while Miranda--who flirts with Harper not out of any romantic interest, but just to toy with him--is chattering away while they drive in his rundown convertible up a dusty mountain road to a hippie commune. He tells her that she "has a way of starting conversations that ends conversations". He can always offer a witty comment, like when he reminds his ol' pal Albert that "the bottom is loaded with nice people", and that "only cream and bastards rise". That's a great line, well-suited to the hard-boiled genre that inspired Harper and the book series it was inspired by, written by Ross Macdonald. (Harper was adapted from his novel, "The Moving Target", where Harper was instead named "Archer", changed for the movie at Newman's behest.) Harper is a film that has been acknowledged as a "return" to the heretofore neglected detective genre--a renaissance that took place from the late Sixties and into the early Seventies, including Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye and more. Harper isn't overly self-referential, but it embodies familiar tropes of the genre. The action is set in California, there are shady deals with the wealthy and powerful, and there's a crafty protagonist who the smarmy elite--the kind of people who aren't worth going out of your way to serve--try to use to their ends. Really, aside from the all too affable Allan, everyone else in Harper is a bit too self-interested--not including Susan, of course. Why does Harper risk life and limb for these people? Is it because he sees himself as a professional, willing to do what must be done for the sake of his job? I think he's "punishing" himself to an extent instead. The previously mentioned scene with Susan seals the deal on this take, as well as a conversation he has with Albert at the end--how they used to have these lofty, altruistic ambitions, which have since given way to their respective scummy careers. But not everyone can be the governor of California, or the district attorney, or any other high profile position better suited to making substantial changes like they wanted to be. So everyone else in the world gets stuck scraping by, used by those who wield that power. It's a bitter read of the client/detective dynamic that often goes hand-in-hand with the detective film, and becomes a justification for the ending. After all, what else can you do when the job you hate is over but throw your hands up in the air?
Recommended for: Fans of a relatively straightforward example of the Sixties era detective movie, emphasizing the complex plot and its characters. Harper may feature plenty of "Swingin' Sixties" moments--which probably felt kitschy even back then--but it is a solid, "bread and butter" entry into the genre that should appeal to audiences expecting a good detective yarn.
Harper's the kind of detective who moves from scene to scene, alternatingly bemused and serious. He chews bubblegum--perhaps as a proxy for brushing his teeth in part, but really its to entice others to letting down their guard. After all, this guy's no cop; he's a cool and mellow cat. (Just what Harper wants them to believe.) He often has a quick reply or retort up his sleeve, predominantly for those within this elite circle who sometimes look down on him. A favorite line comes while Miranda--who flirts with Harper not out of any romantic interest, but just to toy with him--is chattering away while they drive in his rundown convertible up a dusty mountain road to a hippie commune. He tells her that she "has a way of starting conversations that ends conversations". He can always offer a witty comment, like when he reminds his ol' pal Albert that "the bottom is loaded with nice people", and that "only cream and bastards rise". That's a great line, well-suited to the hard-boiled genre that inspired Harper and the book series it was inspired by, written by Ross Macdonald. (Harper was adapted from his novel, "The Moving Target", where Harper was instead named "Archer", changed for the movie at Newman's behest.) Harper is a film that has been acknowledged as a "return" to the heretofore neglected detective genre--a renaissance that took place from the late Sixties and into the early Seventies, including Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye and more. Harper isn't overly self-referential, but it embodies familiar tropes of the genre. The action is set in California, there are shady deals with the wealthy and powerful, and there's a crafty protagonist who the smarmy elite--the kind of people who aren't worth going out of your way to serve--try to use to their ends. Really, aside from the all too affable Allan, everyone else in Harper is a bit too self-interested--not including Susan, of course. Why does Harper risk life and limb for these people? Is it because he sees himself as a professional, willing to do what must be done for the sake of his job? I think he's "punishing" himself to an extent instead. The previously mentioned scene with Susan seals the deal on this take, as well as a conversation he has with Albert at the end--how they used to have these lofty, altruistic ambitions, which have since given way to their respective scummy careers. But not everyone can be the governor of California, or the district attorney, or any other high profile position better suited to making substantial changes like they wanted to be. So everyone else in the world gets stuck scraping by, used by those who wield that power. It's a bitter read of the client/detective dynamic that often goes hand-in-hand with the detective film, and becomes a justification for the ending. After all, what else can you do when the job you hate is over but throw your hands up in the air?
Recommended for: Fans of a relatively straightforward example of the Sixties era detective movie, emphasizing the complex plot and its characters. Harper may feature plenty of "Swingin' Sixties" moments--which probably felt kitschy even back then--but it is a solid, "bread and butter" entry into the genre that should appeal to audiences expecting a good detective yarn.