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The 60's Vs The 70s': "Harper' vs "The Drowning Pool"

posted 2 years ago by roger1 (4046)
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Formerly ecarle.

A certain "accepted wisdom" out there -- in critical communities at least -- is that the 70's was a great improvement "at the movies" over the 60's, at least if one counts off from 1967 through 1977. 1967 begins "New Hollywood" with The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde(both huge youth-based hits); 1977 ENDS "New Hollywood" with "Star Wars" and the rest is Spielberg, Lucas, and comic book movies.

Still, the 60's had a certain something OVER the 70's and Paul Newman's two spins as private eye "Lew Harper" in "Harper"(1966) and "The Drowing Pool" (1975) illustrate it.

Interesting: "Harper" came out in 1966, right ahead of "New Hollywood" 1967, and has one foot in "Old Hollywood"(its a Warner Brothers movie made when Jack Warner still ran the studio) and "New Hollywood"(its a hip movie, Newman is a hip star and the freeze-frame Sopranos like ending suggests that crime WILL pay.)

Still, I like how "Harper" speaks to the kind of lush, plush "professional" filmmaking that Warner Brothers at its best could still provide in the 60's:

An "all star cast" backing Newman, including Lauren Bacall(a throwback to her late husband Bogie's private eye movies) as the rich, crippled woman who gives Newman his case; Janet Leigh(as Newman's trying-to-get-a-divorce but loves him ex-wife); Shelley Winters(as one female suspect), Julie Harris (as another female suspect); Robert Wagner(a pretty handsome guy himself; Newman was unafraid of competition), Arthur Hill (in perhaps his best role; the guy was too dull and dry for most of his career, but is here sympathetic and funny as Newman's lawyer pal) /

The music: Johnny Mandel, one of the 60's foremost purveyors of "smooth jazz orchestration"(Mancini was Number One, but if you could get Mandel or Neal Hefti, you got that 60's sound.)

The script: witty William Goldman, just ahead of his famous Oscar winning "Butch Cassidy" script. Here Newman shares the banter with Hill(as his square pal) and Wagner(as his hip pal) and you can just FEEL the Butch Cassidy vibe.

The hot chick: Pamela Tiffin -- one of the hottest of the 60's -- first introduced dancing around in a bikini, and announcing the film's "1960s hot babe bona fides."

Everything about "Harper" felt first class and well-appointed, and the story was set -- as with the Ross MacDonald book that sired it -- in beachside Southern California, LA and Malibu in the main, but also up the coast in "Ross MacDonald country" -- Santa Barbara under another name.

It was a quintessential update of 1940s Raymond Chandler to 1960's LA, though I like Newman's line to Bacall when she says "I thought private detectives drink in the morning." Newman squints and says: "New type."

Flash forward to 1975. Having just had back-to-back blockbusters The Sting and The Towering Inferno -- but with one other big star per film(Robert Redford, Steve McQueen), Newman tried to re-ininstate himself as the "only star on screen" by returning to Lew Harper one more time; he seems to have known that Harper was one of his more fun and repeatable characters from the 60s.

But...you can't go home again. Certainly not in the 70's. "The Drowning Pool" had that 70's look...realistic, gritty, rather low budget -- that "Harper" in all its slightly fake lushness did not.

And the movie inexplicably moved quintessential SoCal private eye Lew Harper to...New Orleans? Why? He ended up a literal fish out of water.

He didn't quite have the all-star support in this one. Perhaps it was a matter of budget, but instead he got his estimable Oscar winning wife(and frequent co-star) Joanne Woodward to come aboard...in a very underwritten role with very little to do. Tony Franciosa was his cool, handsome self but not used very well either(as a New Orleans cop giving Harper trouble.) And then things moved to character actor level: Murray Hamliton(in the year he played Jaws Mayor) as a rich bad guy; Richard Jaeckel as a thuggish henchman cop....that's about it really.

Except for two women of differing age, scantily clad. One was Melanie Griffith -- in her dangerous jail bait year of 1975(she played almost exactly the same character in a BETTER private eye movie, Night Moves with Gene Hackman, of the same year.) The other was a little known actress of her time named Gail Strickland, whose claim to fame in "The Drowning Pool" is that her character -- the wife of rich villainous Hamilton -- must strip down to her lingerie to survive "The Drowning Pool" with Newman, similarly stripped.

Indeed, its good the movie is called "The Drowning Pool" because in the end, that's what the movie is REALLY about. Newman and Strickland are left captive in a gym shower room -- marked for executiion later -- and to escape, Newman clogs all the drains(with towels) and turns on all the water and waits for the water to rise and carry Strickland and him to an upstairs window.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4046) 2 years ago

The scene allowed Newman to show off his physique -- very muscular but VERY thin -- in HIS underwear, and then to allow Gail Strickland(under a fair "equal opportunity" stripdown) to show off HER physique in bra and panties. Extra element for both: they are very, very wet.

I linger on the "drowning pool" sequence in "The Drowning Pool" because this also -- in the 70's tradition -- rather allows all the characterizations and wit of "Harper' to here almost literally drown in a gimmick which, it seems, the entire MOVIE is about. And then the mystery winds down and Newman goes home, and we simply don't feel that "Harper" epic vibe.

Noteable: "Harper" famously began with a William Goldman idea: Harper sleeps in his office(his wife threw him out) and must retrieve coffee grounds to make coffee. "The Drowning Pool" replaces that scene of frustration with a long opening of Newman sabotaging his New Orleans rental car to shut down the seat belt alarm and allow the car to drive. The latter scene seems a "forced retread" of the firt.

And: in a bit that really should have been cut, Newman tries to fend off some thugs by warning them that "I know karate -- my hands are registered as lethal weapons." Sheesh. Paul Newman as Inspector Clouseau.

Which reminds me: the OTHER 60's movie made into a 70's movie(more successfully) was The Pink Panther. But there, too, the plush and lush 60's production values yielded to a kind of cheapjack realism as Peter Sellers brought back his most famous character.