Harper

Sexy, schmaltzy & slick; all good words to describe this 1966 Paul Newman vehicle. Newman cast in the title role of HARPER is a 40ish 'Private Eye' living out of his small agency office pending divorce from his 'had it up to here' wife Susan played by Janet Leigh. The movie starts out on an early California morning with LEW HARPER going to visit the extremely wealthy convalescent Elaine Sampson (Lauren Bacall) at her palatial mansion. Mrs. Sampson's husband has been missing for a day and one her husband's attorneys Albert Graves (Arthur Hill) has suggested that she hire his longtime friend HARPER to find the missing millionaire. "Drink, Mr. Harper ?", offers Mrs.Sampson. "Not before lunch," the declining HARPER says as he spits out his gum. "(But) I thought you were a detective," inquires Mrs. Sampson. "New type," counters HARPER. Mrs. Sampson's concern about her husband's alleged disappearance has little to do with his well being and more to do with his affability while drunk. Apparently Mr. Sampson has a history of going on drunken binges with "happy starlets" and giving away things. Also present at the house are Mrs. Sampson's ever snooping manservant Felix (Eugene Iglesias), step daughter Miranda (Pamela Tiffin), and Mr. Sampson's private pilot Alan Taggert (Robert Wagner) who was the last person to see Mr. Sampson. HARPER goes on a whirlwind through southern California running into a variety of interesting supporting characters from fat boozy former starlet Faye Estabrook (Shelly Winters) who had been doing Mr. Sampson's astrology charts for the past several years, Faye's sadistic criminal husband Dwight Troy (Robert Webber), cabaret singer Betty Fraley (Julie Harris), and Claude (Strother Martin), a man to whom Mr. Sampson gave away a whole mountain that he has turned into a 'religious sanctuary'. Throughout, HARPER is a 'smart Aleck', who runs circles around the inept police personnel, and is one step ahead of the rest of us. Bright crisp colorful photography, to the point action as directed by Jack Smight, a terrific supporting cast (particularly Winters who didn't mind going out on a limb), & an easy background score. This film is fast paced, and thoroughly enjoyable. HARPER is Paul Newman's baby all the way.

This movie is so great. It is very funny and intriguing at the same time. It liked it so much that I made my boss at the video store sell it to me. Harper is a down on his luck P.I. who is going through a divorce and lives in his office. The story has a lot of plot twists and is an excellent who-done-it. Also, what can I say about Mr. Newman but simply...yum.

It's a "good" thing. From the go-go music and dancing, to the fearless overacting, to the multiple cameos (that Shelley Winters as an over-eating amorous drunk - wow!) by a who's who of famous actors, this film has everything but snappy editing. Enjoyable mainly for its unpredictability and seeing actors given free reign with their characters (Robert Wagner doing a bad James Cagney out of the blue!). Enjoyable. If I had reviewed this in the 60's I'd have given it a "5". In 2002, I give it an "8".

The film opens with Harper (Newman), unshaven and gradually awakening from a hangover… He puts his head under a faucet, attempts to make coffee but finds none left, and dispiritedly takes yesterday's grounds from the garbage and makes a perfect1y terrible cup of coffee… At once we get Harper's image as an antihero detective without any illusions As he is commissioned by Lauren Bacall to trace her wealthy husband who has been kidnapped, the details are filled in: he's tough, ironic, cool, unpleasant and repugnant… Although occasionally given to a moment of sensitivity or remorse, he's most1y sadistic and exploitative Harper is a loner, with an air of detachment and an ability to dispatch opponents with a fist and a flippant remark… He swings into action only mechanically… He chews gum constantly, looks around in an uninteresting manner, makes little disapproving gestures, laughs in total disregards, and smiles mischievously Harper's dealings with women are based exclusively on coldness, deception and sexual exploitation… He is estranged from his wife and would like to renew his marriage

Paul Newman was three years away from "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid" when he starred in this, a similarly breezy caper flick employing the same writer and cinematographer as would "Butch". But "Harper" tries too hard to be cool, falling short both as story and character study. Lew Harper (Newman) is down to recycling used coffee filters and waiting for his wife's divorce to come through when he gets a plum assignment: Find a rich drunk named Sampson with a talent for making enemies. Suspects include his convalescent wife (Lauren Bacall), his beautiful daughter (Pamela Tiffin), his private pilot (Robert Wagner), and his tipsy astrologer (Shelley Winters). Harper's also trying to reconnect with his wife (Janet Leigh), even though he is unable to take their relationship seriously. Watching Newman play cut-up is a lot of fun, and "Harper" coasts on its sunny charm - for a while. Harper's a "new type" of detective, who chews gum instead of cigars, tools around in a tiny two-tone car, and ignores the hottie daughter for a tray of finger food. "With a little luck we'll all be bombed by suppertime" is Harper telling someone he's about to crack the case. Two things hold "Harper" back, both major: One is the story is way too underbaked. There's a kidnapping at the center of the story, and then a second, apparently unrelated bit of business involving Mexicans smuggled over the California border which throws more suspicious folks into the mix. How the two tie in is never clear, except that Harper stumbles across one while investigating the other and has to deal with both. Neither case generates much intrigue - what you get is a lot of cars driving fast and Harper getting punched around, rote business without a clear, connecting story. The second major problem, for which I blame director Jack Smight, is the film's harsh tonal shift. It goes from being a somewhat lighthearted take-off on a noir mystery to a hard-boiled film in its own right, with Julie Harris overplaying the part of a sad junkie and Harper himself betraying his true colors as a Grade-Z stinker. Conrad Hall's lenswork and Johnny Mandel's theme music remain zippy and bright, however, and William Goldman's script still goes for the punchlines even as the body count rises and Harper looks ready to throw himself in the Pacific Ocean. Newman established himself in the 1960s as the ultimate anti-hero, and his take on Harper gives us more of the same, only with an effort at comedy he sometimes overplays. He grimaces, double-takes, winks, snorts, snickers, and spits out enough gum to plaster the San Andreas Fault. He seems to have fun, though, and watching him is fun, at least in the first half, with Tiffin and Wagner presenting his best straight men. "Do you think I'm attractive?" Tiffin asks Harper while lounging on a bed. "You're young, rich, and beautiful and my wife's divorcing me," Harper answers. "What do you think I think?" For his part, Wagner's character helps Harper out of a jam and banters with the guy. Harper calls him "Beauty", a heckuva thing for Newman to call anyone, but their chemistry works, at least until the film turns dark and weird and even Strother Martin as a kooky New Age preacher man can't force a smile. Hey, you think if Wagner grew a moustache, dyed his hair blond, and hung around for more than a few scenes, he and Newman could have made something fun out of this?

The opening sequence of this seems to suggest a better movie than the one that arrives. It tries to toy with the noir genre for the 60's youth culture. It's not a good fit. I really don't get the 100 percent rating for this on R.T.. Must be that people were bowled over by the cast and the gimmick; the "package," rather than any quality that can be detected with your sense organs. As for me I disliked this movie and found I could turn it off at any point because it just wasn't building and the swinging production design was so ugly. It looks like bad TV from the 70s. It makes similar use of L.A. locations and a spoiled daughter as the Big Sleep but... why? Why shoot a garish color noir that doesn't have any of the pleasure or cleverness of the old noirs? And the star power (Robert Wagner) is nothing special. Most attempts at 70's noir (Noir that takes place in the 70s - The Long Goodbye, The Late Show) yield this displeasing result. This of course leaves out Chinatown. It's neither a decent document of the 60s or a decent noir. Just toos away the noir baggage and make a decent movie. Newman, who's been good elsewhere is just annoying here. The disguises he adopts here (twangs) are hopelessly shabby. Who would star in a movie where an entire ensemble is portrayed as flunkies & losers so that you can look good? There's about eleven false endings. It goes on forever. I'd rather watch the noirs "Where the Sidewalk Ends" or "the Big Combo" twenty times than sit through any of "Harper" again.

"Harper" was years ahead of its time. I had to constantly keep reminding myself that I wasn't watching an episode of Mannix (1967) or Cannon (1971). It has the feeling and ambiance of just about every 70s made-for-TV cop drama. Except it lasts twice as long. People said Paul Newman's acting in The Silver Chalice (1954) was bad. That was Oscar material compared to "Harper." The sensitive, torn up inside young man from Cat On A Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1962), the starry-eyed idealist from Exodus (1960) and Hud (1963) fumbles badly as he attempts to field a hard-boiled detective role. Mostly he does it through ludicrous mugging and overacting. Julie Harris is equally miscast as an ex (?) junkie. She is too beautiful and middle-class looking to be the "fungus" she is supposed to be portraying. She can deliver the goods, emotion-wise, of course, but not believably so in this picture. Shelley Winters is pretty good, but I don't know why she took the part. She is nothing but belittled and insulted by all the men who come in contact with her, made out to be something so repulsive that nobody in their right mind would go near her. "What happened to her? She got FAT!" is how she is introduced, and it goes downhill from there. In fact, the movie is very misogynistic all the way through. "You're so old-fashioned, I bet you think women belong in the home," taunts Tiffin. "Not in my home," retorts Newman. The only sex he has in the entire film basically amounts to a date rape. The tits-and-ass appeal are provided by Tiffin and Wagner, she doing a go-go dance in a brief bikini on a diving board that was imitated by both Goldie Hawn and Pamela Rogers on Laugh-In (1967), and he with his Nair'ed chest and plethora of butt shots. There are lots of laughs, most of them unintentional. The best is when Strother Martin's bracero cult members rise up out of nowhere like zombies in Night of the Living Dead (1968) or The Omega Man (1971) and surround Newman. He even holds them at bay by swinging a burning torch! Bacall is solid, but her part is small. Most enjoyable moment is an exchange of vilifications with Tiffin, with Newman kibitzing, "Puss, puss, puss" from the sidelines. Standing out like a beacon amidst all this mishmosh is Janet Leigh, who plays the only character I liked, Newman's ex (?) wife. Once again her part is rather small, but she has the only worthwhile moments in the entire film. Too bad, too, because with its complex plot and its abundance of quirky characters, Harper could have been another Big Sleep. Instead, it turned out to be more of a Big Snicker.

I first saw this film when it came out, at age 12, and chewed my gum like Paul Newman for the next 20 years. What's remarkable about that is, I "got" the film at that time, recognized its depth (as well as its superficialities), loved it; and having seen the film several times over many years, the basic experience hasn't changed. This is probably the most accessible "hardboiled" detective film ever made, yet it never panders - it depicts a rough world straight on, and doesn't particularly like - or condemn - any of its characters. Is it the classic that "The Big Sleep" is? No, because its world is smaller than that of Chandler/Faulkner/Hawks, even though it glitters more; and Smight is a solidly competent director but not an 'auteur' - which works in the film's favor: Smight just gets on with the job and tells his story, he doesn't stop for extra flourishes. But, although all the acting in the film is top-quality, it is Newman's performance that carries the film over the top: witty, cynical, detached, yet with glimpses of passion and commitment, Newman uses Harper to define pre-hippie cool once and for all. Historical note: although this is not "The-Maltese-Falcon" classic noir film, the detective film was believed to be a genre of the past (at best fodder for bad TV) when this came out. "Harper" kept alive what many thought a dead tradition. The reviewer who wrote that this film made the Elliot Gould "Long Goodbye" possible is right on the money; and when nine years later Jack Nicholson starred in Polanski's tribute to the genre - "Chinatown" - it was Newman's performance here that he is referencing, not Bogart. That makes this an important film, and one should give a second look to a film that influenced so many others.

Let me tell ya - If 1966's "Harper" was supposed to be a prime example of Hollywood "neo-noir" - IMO - It sure fell flat on its smug, little face. Old "blue eyes" himself, Paul Newman plays irksome, apathetic, L.A. gumshoe, Lewis Harper, who has about as much charm and charisma as does a slimy slug. Regardless of this film's "big star" cast - Its "Find-A-Missing-Millionaire" story got so complicated and convoluted that it had me repeatedly rolling my eyes to the ceiling and groaning out in total exasperation, over, and over again.... (Sheesh! Give me a break, already!) (I won't even get into the tiresome bickering that Harper and his estranged wife regularly got into.... Ho-hum!) Anyway - If you're like me - You're gonna absolutely hate the note that this film's story ends on, big-time. You really are.

Another film-noir with a very muddled plot. Why does that always happen? Is it some kind of tradition? It irritated me here, and it had irritated me in "The Big Sleep" as well. But "Harper" is much slower and more protracted. At least Newman plays the detective quite enjoyably.