HARPER: Blu-ray (Warner Bros. 1966) Warner Archive

As John Huston was preparing 1946’s The Big Sleep, based on Raymond Chandler’s pulp fiction detective thriller, he was faced with a baffling question. Who killed the Sternwood’s chauffeur, Sean Regan? Unable to find closure from his team of writers, Huston contacted the author who promptly informed the director he really hadn’t a clue. Indeed, like Hitchcock and his MacGuffins, the murder in Chandler’s novel was incidental to the interplay between his fictional hero, Philip Marlowe and the nefarious characters met along the way. Chandler’s great strength as a writer was, is and will forever remain his crackling dialogue and ability to create fascinating situations in and of themselves. But from a purely narrative constructionist’s perspective, Chandler tended to get lost in his stories. Not that it made any difference to his readers. In fact, perusing Chandler’s writing today, one remains struck by its readability in spite of its lack of cohesion.

Chandler’s popularity was arguably not lost on author Ross MacDonald, who inherited the mantle from Chandler in the late 1960s and proved to be as cryptic in his crime writing prose as his predecessor. Director Jack Smight’s Harper (1966) can ostensibly be considered The Big Sleep of its generation: a thoroughly elaborate story of abduction, murder and spousal betrayal. Like The Big Sleep, Harper is a movie of immense style; its stunning use of California locations spectacularly photographed by Conrad L. Hall, and its ensemble cast, featuring some of the best in the business, working overtime to throw the film’s protagonist, P.I. Lew Harper (Paul Newman) completely off his game. For most of its 121 minutes, Harper leaves the audience just as disoriented as our hero. The strength of the piece is not the ‘who’ in this whodunit, but in the man: Lew Harper - much too tough for the fellas and way too sexy for the ladies.

By 1966 the detective/thriller, a main staple throughout the 1940's in American cinema, had lost much of its luster. Indeed, nothing quite like Harper had been attempted on the screen for a very long while. All the more reason to admire Harper for its slick and stylish resurrection of this subgenre. With its hard-edged hero, flirtatious sex kittens and unscrupulous social deviants, out for all they can get, creating a milieu of danger, Harper slinks across the screen with modish trappings and hairpin plot twists; a veritable pulp fiction masterpiece that soaks up the California sunshine even as it casts a spurious pall over everything and everyone along this sunlit coastline. Style over substance has frequently proven a magic elixir to movie audiences, and in Harper we have the quintessence of a sort of perfection that need not concern itself with making all that much good sense along the way. The strength of the picture is Newman’s hard-edged gumshoe; the joy in it to be gleaned from the uber-slick contempt he indiscriminately applies, with great amusement, to the noblesse oblige of the widow Sampson (played with sinister sex appeal by Lauren Bacall).

William Goldman’s screenplay is an enigma. Who kidnapped millionaire Ralph Sampson gets buried beneath a much more fascinating series of unfortunate events. Our story opens on a typical day in the seemingly unglamorous life of Lew Harper. He awakens in his undershirt and boxers inside a rundown apartment/office, blinded by the mid-morning sun, and thereafter rescuing yesterday’s stained coffee filter from the garbage to brew a fresh pot. From this rather inauspicious debut we delve into the alternative universe of Bel Air; a moneyed playground where the ultra-rich laze around poolside all day without a care in the world. Except on this particular day the physically disabled egotist, Elaine Sampson (Lauren Bacall) has discovered that her husband Ralph (whom we never see) has disappeared without a trace.

Elaine, who is not nearly as concerned as she ought to be, nevertheless finds it prudent to inform the family’s milquetoast attorney, Albert Graves (Arthur Hill) about Ralph’s absence and Albert, in turn, pawns off the assignment on his close friend, Lew Harper. Harper wastes no time interviewing Elaine, who is both flirtatious yet strangely aloof, suspecting Ralph is off with another woman. Harper then finds Ralph’s daughter, Miranda (Pamela Tiffin) frugging in a bikini by the pool while the missing millionaire’s private pilot, Alan Taggert (Robert Wagner) looks on with lascivious intentions. Harper nicknames Alan ‘beauty’ because of his bronzed Apollo appeal. It’s obvious Miranda wants to be ‘Beauty’s girl’. Alas, for him she represents just another rich little diversion to pass the time. ‘Beauty’ takes Miranda and Harper to Ralph’s private bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel to search for clues. She feigns a seduction toward Harper that ends when he pretends he would be willing to take advantage of her inside Ralph’s bedroom – a garish nightmare fancifully decorated in violent purple and golden astrological signs. Finding a glamorous photo of ex-movie star, Fay Estabrook (Shelly Winters) among Ralph’s belongings Harper inquiries, “Whatever happened to her?” to which ‘Beauty’ laughingly declares, “She got fat!”

Pretending to be an adoring fan from Texas, Harper fakes an ‘accidental’ rendezvous with Fay at a nightclub. He quickly gets her drunk…on flattery and cheap booze, taking Fay home where she promptly passes out. Searching her bungalow in haste, Harper intercepts a telephone call meant for Fay’s husband, Dwight Troy (Robert Webber) from Betty Fraley (Julie Harris) – a drug-addicted lounge singer who forewarns that ‘someone’ (a.k.a. Harper) is skulking around to unearth juicy little tidbits from their past. When Harper reveals he is not Troy, Betty abruptly hangs up and Troy, who has been hiding in the bungalow all along, emerges to shoo Harper away at gunpoint. The atmospheric mileage director Smight gets from these disconnected vignettes is admirable. In fact, we cling to every juicy little morsel and crumb parceled off in this gumbo of mystery and misdirection.

Harper tracks Betty down at the beatnik nightclub where she sings. He directly threatens to turn her in to the narcotics squad after observing fresh needle marks on her arm. Regrettably, Harper has underestimated his mark this time. Betty gets one of the bouncers, Puddler (Roy Jenson) to carpet-haul Harper into the alley behind the club instead. ‘Beauty’ intervenes, knocking Puddler unconscious with Harper’s gun. The two men now hurry back to Fay’s bungalow where Harper continues his search for evidence while ‘Beauty’ keeps watch outside. Hearing gunshots, Harper rushes outside. He is unsuccessful to stop a truck speeding away from the property and narrowly averts getting run over.

The next day Harper collects Miranda for a trip to the mountaintop temple bequeathed by Ralph to spiritual guru, Claude (Strother Martin) presumably for the purposes of establishing a religious retreat. Harper isn’t fooled by Claude’s re-born piety, recognizing the familiar tire treads from the same truck left in the dust just outside the compound. Meanwhile, Elaine is sent a ransom note written in Ralph’s hand, asking her to cash in a cool half million in bonds. Harper deduces the kidnapper is an insider. With Beauty and Albert’s complicity he fakes drop off at an abandoned oil refinery. Instead, a struggle ensues and one of the kidnappers (Tom Steele) plummets to his death. Harper finds a matchbook inside the dead man’s coat pocket for a bar called ‘The Corner’ and plies his craft to pump the waitress and bartender for more information. He quickly learns the deceased was Eddie Fraley – Betty’s brother, who made a long-distance call to someone in Vegas three nights before, using The Corner’s payphone. 

Harper then identifies the same truck that tried to run him down, parked just outside. Waiting for the driver, Harper tails the truck to Claude’s temple where he is ambushed by Claude and Troy who have been using it as a front to smuggle illegal immigrants. Taken to an abandoned shack to be further pummeled by Puddler, Harper instead manages to break free, kill Puddler and escape. He arrives at his estranged wife, Susan’s (Janet Leigh) bungalow a disheveled mess. Although bitter over their breakup, Susan takes pity on Harper. The two share an intimate night together and Harper – true to form – runs out on her the next morning. What a sweetheart!

On the pretext to borrow a clean shirt, Harper confronts ‘Beauty’ about his involvement with Betty Fraley. The two are involved in Ralph’s kidnapping. ‘Beauty’ admits as much, but then draws a gun on Harper whom he intends to murder. Instead, Albert bursts in, shooting and killing ‘Beauty’. Harper races over to Betty’s home in Castle Beach where she is presently being tortured by Troy with cigarette burns applied to the bare soles of her feet as Claude and Fay look on. Betty confesses the whereabouts of the hidden ransom. Harper breaks through one of the window, killing Troy, knocking Claude unconscious and locking Fay inside a closet. Harper then rescues Betty, who tells him Ralph is being held captive inside an abandoned oil tanker. Next, Harper telephones Albert to meet them at the shipyards.

All, however, does not go according to plan. Leaving Betty to wait in his car, Harper rushes into the tanker where he is promptly knocked unconscious by an unseen attacker. Arriving late to the scene, Albert revives Harper only to discover Ralph murdered inside one of the ship’s compartments. Harper learns Betty has stolen his car. He and Albert make chase in Albert’s car along a narrow hillside. In her zeal to get away, Betty loses control and plummets to her death. Harper telephones Elaine with the news of Ralph’s demise. Queerly, this seems to satisfy her immensely. On the drive back to Elaine’s, Harper confides in Albert he suspects him of Ralph’s murder, citing that anyone involved in the heist would have searched his pockets for the key to the locker – something Harper still has on him.  Albert confesses: he thought Ralph a despicable man who toyed with people for his own amusement. Pulling up to Elaine’s, Harper informs Albert he intends to give her back the ransom money. The only way Albert can hope to escape prosecution is by shooting him in the back. Albert draws his pistol on Harper as he slowly walks toward the front door. But at the last possible moment, both men have a change of heart – presumably because of their mutual friendship.

Right from its opening, through its jigsaw puzzle plotting, until its morally ambiguous conclusion, Harper is not so much complex as it remains perplexing. As in The Big Sleep, the pieces simply do not add up. Nor do they fit together neatly by the end. And yet, in Harper’s world everything makes perfect sense; the exoticism of southern sunny Cal and noir-ish trappings effectively lensed by cinematographer, Conrad L. Hall, conspiring to lure the audience into a maelstrom of intrigues that serve as their own immediate story-telling signposts, oddly absent of any connective tissue to make the story gel. Despite its seemingly linear narrative, Harper never resolves to take the audience from points ‘A’ to ‘B’. Indeed, in between, the whole alphabet intervenes, contributing to the riddle in the middle while entirely obscuring interests in Harper’s actual case: locating Ralph Sampson. In the end, Harper proves an engaging brainteaser with no easy explanation. The picture is, of course, immeasurably blessed with Newman as its leading man – an entirely different, though arguably just as ambiguous anti-hero as Bogart’s Philip Marlowe. Lew Harper knows how to play the game, toying with suspects and women alike, and, finding sadistic pleasure in a very seedy profession.

Lew Harper is a man of few words, so perfectly timed they elicit a concise snapshot that makes him immediately lovable.  How much of Lew Harper’s appeal is based on our appreciation of Newman’s own persona is debatable. And in truth, Newman has never entirely been able to shed his skin to ‘become’ a character on the screen. Like Cary Grant, Newman is ever present as himself - or a reasonable facsimile we, the audience, assume is really Paul Newman in the flesh, in or out of the spotlight. However, this assessment of Newman – as star – does not negate the pleasure of watching him work. On the contrary, the observation of the man apart from his craft, or perhaps in spite of it, is a sheer delight. Newman is a star – period - and stars of his caliber are very rare indeed; ghost flowers from a golden epoch in Hollywood’s history when movies and movie stars really were larger than life.

The other half of Harper’s enjoyment is quelled from the elegant roster of solid talents amassed to back Newman up. Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris, Shelly Winters, Robert Wagner, et al. provide a sort of Around the World in 80 Days ‘look who’s here’ experience, giving off the necessary ‘built-in’ ‘feel good’ viewing. We look forward to what come next because of ‘who’ comes next. The last good fortune visited upon the film worth noting is Conrad Hall’s lush cinematography, as much a time capsule of swingin’ sixties California as a lavishly appointed backdrop in all its high key lighting and interesting camera setups. Claude E. Carpenter’s set decoration and Alfred Sweeney’s art direction take us on a gold coast travelogue.  Because of its many assets, not only does the lack of cohesion in William Goldman’s screenplay not sink the picture but, in the final analysis, it doesn’t make one iota of a difference to our viewing pleasure. Harper’s ‘what me worry?’ approach to storytelling is mirrored in the character’s laissez faire attitudes toward his profession and life itself, and, in director Jack Smight’s casual aversion to clarifying the story any further. In the final analysis, Harper’s success at the box office briefly resurrected the appeal of detective thrillers on the big screen. Predictably, none that followed matched Harper as a class act.

The Warner Archive’s Blu-ray is typically solid. No surprise, actually, given WAC’s high standards in general, but also the solidity of the DVD from 2005 that preceded it. Predictably, the Blu-ray advances in overall color saturation and image clarity. Everything pops as it should with no sign of age-related wear and tear. We sincerely would wish for WAC to concentrate more of its hard-won efforts on more A-list catalog like Harper instead of a lot of the ‘B’ and ‘C’ grade fodder we have seen being pumped out of their gates of late. More Newman, please…and more Gable, Garbo, Astaire, Bette Davis, Norma Shearer, Judy Garland, Gary Cooper, Mickey Rooney… Oh, hell – the list of viable contenders under Warner’s umbrella is endless. Which makes hi-def releases of gunk like It Came from Hell and The Green Slime, pushed to the head of the queue, just seem…well…wrong! But I digress.  Harper looks perfect on Blu-ray and I am grateful for WAC’s continued commitment to its deep catalog releases. The 5.1 DTS offers solid spatial separation. William Goldman’s audio commentary is carried over from the DVD. It isn’t all that comprehensive, but is interesting in spots.  Bottom line: very highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

1