MovieChat Forums > Mirage (1965) Discussion > Diane Baker and Walter Matthau(SPOILERS)

Diane Baker and Walter Matthau(SPOILERS)

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
4 replies | jump to latest

"Mirage" is a good thriller...but not a great one...and one of the reasons that it isn't great is that it has a few "holes" in its logic(but don't all thrillers.)

Here is a big one for me:

About 2/3 through the film, the mysterious Diane Baker enters Greg Peck's apartment with him. They find Walter Matthau's private eye Caselle there. Good dialogue:

Peck: (To Baker) This is Caselle...I don't know his first name.
Peck: (To Matthau) This is Shela...I don't know her LAST name.

Anyway, Baker is friendly with Matthau, but Matthau gives off a "I want to be alone with Greg" vibe, and Baker dutifully goes into the kitchen...but can be seen starting to eavesdrop from there.

Matthau gives Peck vital information, the two have a spat(Peck doesn't LIKE receiving information that will "make him remember"), they "kiss and make up" and agree to meet again the next day. Matthau leaves.

...and we never see Matthau alive again. We DO see his corpse the next day, on his office desktop with a phone cord tied around it.

Fast-forward to : the end of the movie.

All the main baddies have been neutralized(though none of them killed, its a 1965 movie, after all) and Greg and Diane join for a "happily ever after" cuddle.

And I've always wondered about this:

Clearly Diane Baker must have "ratted out" Walter Matthau to the bad guys who -- at that time in the movie -- are her sponsors. Baker helped GET MATTHAU KILLED.

And yet, at the end, here's Greg in a clinch with the woman who sent a very nice guy(Matthau) to his death.

Leaves a bitter taste.

[–] greenbudgie (2355) 4 years ago

I don't always notice plot holes but you've widened this one on Diane Baker for me. I see what you mean about her. She's in on everything and changes sides all the time. Peck doesn't seem to know or care that she might be responsible for Matthau's murder.

Killing off Matthau is an unforgivable sin and I start to lose interest in the mystery after his departure. His expressive performance acts Peck's flat deep-voiced character right off the screen. The only time Peck shows any emotion is when he trashes Matthau's office in anger after he finds his friend murdered.

I don't think that the Peck/Baker dynamic really works. Despite two good jokes between them. About what people do in the dark on the stairwell after the blackout. And about running an ad in the Times at the end. But all along I didn't like Diane Baker's character. And now you've exposed her for the bad gal she really was. I think the old noir mysteries were better at portraying ambiguous characters like hers. And she would have probably taken a bullet at the end in one of those movies.

I agree that this is not a great thriller. I found the no-segway flashbacks in the reveal scene too demanding. During that sequence I was beginning not to care why Peck had lost his memory.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

I don't always notice plot holes but you've widened this one on Diane Baker for me. I see what you mean about her. She's in on everything and changes sides all the time.

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And that's OK...as far as it goes. I'm reminded how Eva Marie Saint in Hitchcock's 1959 "North by Northwest" also keeps changing sides -- and voluntarily sends Cary Grant off to get killed by a crop duster. Unlike Matthau, Grant does NOT get killed(he kills the killers) but..Saint would have been in the same boat, yes? Still, with Baker, its pretty clear that Baker herself "fingers" Matthau to the bad guys. He's expendable to her.

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Peck doesn't seem to know or care that she might be responsible for Matthau's murder.

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And that to me is not only a plot hole...its bad for his character. Matthau really HELPED Peck, when no one else would("I was willing to stick this out with you," Matthau says "because you're all alone")...but Peck will just settle down(marriage? kids?) with the woman who had Matthau killed.

Now I suppose it could be said that the bad guys were already on to Matthau -- George Kennedy tried to kill him in the basement of the skyscraper -- and he was doomed anyway. But why add the "Baker bit?" Bad screenwriting.

There is this though: OK, maybe Peck didn't see what we saw(Baker eavesdropping on Matthau.) But that's bad screenwriting, too -- we WANT Peck to know.

[–] ecarle (14979) 4 years ago

Killing off Matthau is an unforgivable sin and I start to lose interest in the mystery after his departure.

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Matthau himself told the director, "if you kill me off, you're gonna lose box office," and recommended that Casselle survive. Matthau already knew that he was likeable and had a fan base(even when HE played killers.) Indeed, "Mirage" is historic because it is really the final time he played a supporting role in a film. In The Fortune Cookie(1966) the next year, Matthau won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, but told the press, "I'm over the title, this was a leading role." And from then on...he WAS a leading man. A big one!

BTW, Peck wanted Matthau so badly for "Mirage" that he cut his own pay to raise the price to get Matthau on board.

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His expressive performance acts Peck's flat deep-voiced character right off the screen.

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Yes. The two men are roughly the same height, both tall, both thin. Standing side by side, we SEE : handsome leading man and supporting guy. But we LIKE Matthau a lot better and we are seeing "the future of movies." Matthau's PERSONALITY would make him a star. It not like handsome leading men would go away(see Redford and Cruise) but...there was room for a somewhat funny looking guy like Matthau.

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The only time Peck shows any emotion is when he trashes Matthau's office in anger after he finds his friend murdered.

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Well to Peck's credit, he is playing a man who is always seething with anger because "he is fighting his amnesia" and he really doesn't WANT to remember what happened to him. I credit Peck with being willing to play unlikeable here

With Matthau gone, Peck has lost his only true ally. Its true: Mirage gets less fun with Matthau gone -- but it also gets MORE terrifying. Peck has no help anymore. He's on his own to the climax -- where Baker finally switches sides again(along with one more key character) but...we miss Matthau.

That's why Matthau became a leading man star, the very next year.

[–] huwdj (4566) 4 years ago

Agreed, a good thriller but not a great one. Not usually the kind of film I enjoy but this one worked for me. It did occur to me that Baker might have betrayed Peck and Matthau - but it ain't necessarily so. They'd already been in a fight with George Kennedy and it is quite possible there were other operatives trailing them and later following Matthau back to his office.