Gumshoe (1971)

          A peculiar byproduct of the ’70s film-noir revival, this British picture stars Albert Finney as a Liverpool everyman who works at a nightclub but aspires to be a private eye in the Chandler/Hammett mode. As a result, he regularly slips into a stilted American accent, talking about “dames” and “heaters” and such even though everyone around him speaks in normal early-‘70s British vernacular. Gumshoe is sort of a spoof, but because the storyline gets convoluted and dark, it’s also sort of a thriller and sort of a whodunnit. Oh, and sort of a character study, too. However, it’s worth noting that Gumshoe was the directorial debut of Stephen Frears, who has made a career out of mixing genres in such offbeat movies as The Grifters(1990) and Dirty Pretty Things(2002)—so it’s possible Gumshoe was deliberately conceived as self-reflexive satire. Whatever the intentions, the result is the same—Gumshoe is sluggish and unfocused, with a number of interesting scenes contributing to an underwhelming sum effect.

          Finney plays Eddie Ginley, a bitter man whose true love, Ellen (Billie Whitelaw), left him for his own brother, William (Frank Finlay). Worse, William is a successful businessman with influence at Eddie’s nightclub, so even though the siblings hate each other, Eddie depends on William’s goodwill for continued employment. When the movie begins, Eddie half-jokingly places a newspaper ad offering his services as a private eye. Soon afterward, a client shows up and gives Eddie a package containing a gun, money, and a photo of a woman—instructions for a paid murder? At first, Eddie thinks his brother is playing a cruel joke, but then he realizes he’s been drawn into a strange mystery involving debauchery, deceit, and drugs. Unfortunately, the mystery is nearly impenetrable, and Eddie’s not a sufficiently interesting character to justify the effort of slogging through the plot. (The actors’ thick blue-collar accents make comprehension even more difficult.) Finney’s performance is low-key to a fault, despite flashes of cynical charm, so Finlay’s seething malice and Whitelaw’s pained ambivalence command greater attention—a considerable problem since they’re only in the movie periodically, whereas Finney is in nearly every scene.

Gumshoe: FUNKY

Night Moves (1975)

          Complementing outright throwbacks such as Chinatown (1974), several ’70s thrillers updated classic film-noir style with modern characters, settings, and themes. Arthur Penn’s Night Moves is among the best of these current-day noirs, featuring a small-time detective who has seen too much misery to muster any real hope for the human species. Nonetheless, like all the best noir heroes, he strives to do something good as a way of compensating for all the bad in the world, and thus ironically dooms not only himself but also the very people he’s trying to protect. Penn, whose erratic feature career peaked with a run of counterculture-themed pictures spanning from Bonnie and Clyde(1967) to this film, was at his best orchestrating subtle interactions between complicated characters, and he does a terrific job in Night Moves of meshing bitter tonalities.

          A seething Gene Hackman stars as low-rent L.A. investigator Harry Moseby. An amiable idealist whose principles alienate him from the compromisers who surround him, Harry is married to Ellen (Susan Clark), who wants him to shutter his one-man agency and work for a big firm. Preferring to steer his own course, Harry focuses on his next case, which involves tracking down teen runaway Delly (Melanie Griffith), the daughter of a blowsy widow (Janet Ward) who, a lifetime ago, was a promiscuous Hollywood starlet. During downtime between investigative chores, Harry discovers that Ellen is cheating on him, so he’s only too happy to follow a lead on Delly’s whereabouts to Florida, a continent away from his troubled marriage. In the sweaty Florida Keys, Harry finds Delly living with her lecherous stepfather, Tom (John Crawford), and his sexy companion, Paula (Jennifer Warren). Also part of the mix is Quentin (James Woods), a squirrelly friend of Delly’s who works as a mechanic for film-industry stuntmen.

          Alan Sharp’s provocative script features murky plotting but crisp character work, so even when the story is hard to follow, moment-to-moment engagement between people is interesting. And since the film is driven by Harry’s zigzag journey from naïveté to despair and then to a misguided sort of optimism, each time he encounters some tricky new piece of information, his relationship with someone changes. Though Hackman was never one to play for cheap sympathy, it’s heartbreaking to watch Harry cast about for someone who deserves his trust, only to be disappointed again and again.

          Every performance in the movie exists in the shadow of Hackman’s great work, but all of the actors hit the right notes, with Griffith’s adolescent petulance resonating strongly. Composer Michael Small and cinematographer Bruce Surtees contribute tremendously to the film’s shadowy mood, and Penn achieves one of his finest cinematic moments with the picture’s desolate finale. Night Moves gets a bit pretentious at times, but when the movie is really flying, it becomes a potent meditation on the challenge of finding sold moral footing during a confusing period in the evolution of the American identity.

Night Moves: GROOVY

Hustle (1975)

          An admirable but not entirely successful attempt at transplanting classic film-noir themes into a hip ’70s milieu, this downbeat detective thriller features the peculiar pairing of delicate Gallic beauty Catherine Deneuve and suave Deep South stud Burt Reynolds. The fact that these actors don’t exist in the same cinematic universe reflects the many clashing tonalities director Robert Aldrich brings to Hustle. After smoothly blending comedy and drama in an earlier Reynolds movie, The Longest Yard (1974), Aldrich tries to do too many things here, because Hustle aspires to be a tragedy, a whodunit, a commentary on sexual politics, and more. Since Aldrich was generally at his best making unpretentious pulp, with deeper themes buried below the surface, his striving for Big Statements is awkward—much in the same way that Deneuve’s cool sophistication fails to gel with Reynolds’ hot emotionalism, the high and low aspects of this movie’s storytelling collide to produce a narrative muddle.

          The picture begins with cynical LA detectives Phil Gaines (Reynolds) and Louis Belgrave (Paul Winfield) commencing their investigation into the murder of a young hooker. The victim’s father, Korean War vet Marty Hollinger (Ben Johnson), is sniffing around the crime as well, because he wants revenge. When clues identify lawyer Leo Sellers (Eddie Albert) as a possible suspect, things get tricky not only because Sellers has political influence but because Sellers is a patron of another hooker, Nicole (Deneuve)—who happens to be Phil’s girlfriend.

          The idea of a cop living on both sides of the law is always provocative, but in this case, Phil’s relationship with Nicole makes him unsympathetic. Tolerating her demeaning career paints him as a user, while pushing her to abandon her work suggests he’s a chauvinist; there’s no way for Reynolds to win. Nonetheless, the actor gives a valiant effort, while Deneuve struggles to elevate her clichéd role despite obvious difficulty with English-language dialogue. Inhibited by iffy writing and overreaching direction, the stars end up letting their physicality do most of the acting—Deneuve looks ravishing and Reynolds looks tough. But that’s not enough. Excepting Johnson, whose obsessive bloodlust resonates, most of the skilled supporting cast gets lost in the cinematic muddiness, and Aldrich does no one any favors by shooting interiors with ugly, high-contrast lighting. Still, Hustle gets points for seediness and for the nihilism of its ending.

Hustle: FUNKY

Peeper (1976)

          Yet another film-noir spoof, as if there weren’t enough of those in the ’70s, Peeper is a trifle that goes down smoothly because of charismatic actors and skilled filmmakers, even though it’s among the least memorable pictures ever made by its participants. Director Peter Hyams, who tried his hand at several genres before eventually finding his groove with larky conspiracy thrillers in the late ’70s, wasn’t the right man to helm a lighthearted parody, so his assertive visual style clashes with the material from beginning to end. That said, screenwriter W.D. Richter (working from a novel by Keith Laumer) was in the early days of an equally eclectic career, so his script misses the mark just as widely as Hyams’ direction. Richter capably emulates some tropes of ’40s private-eye movies, notably caustic narration, but his screenplay isn’t clever or funny enough to make an impression. Nonetheless, Hyams’ sophisticated approach to image-making and Richter’s cockeyed dialogue style are interesting in any context, so their behind-the-scenes efforts ensure that Peeper has style, albeit not the correct style.

          Better still, Peeper has Michael Caine. Even though the charming Cockney rogue coasts through this picture, it’s pleasurable to listen to him deliver snotty rants like this one: “My having the photo bothers you, you being bothered bothers me, and the fact that I haven’t been thrown out of here sooner bothers me even more.” And, yes, the plot of Peeper is so murky that Caine’s speech actually makes sense in context. The gist of the story, which takes place in the ’40s, is that second-rate private eye Tucker (Caine) has been hired to find a man’s long-missing daughter, who is now an adult. Tucker discerns that the woman might have become part of the Pendergast family, a wealthy clan living in Beverly Hills, and Tucker sets his eyes on Ellen (Natalie Wood) as a likely prospect. Intrigue and shenanigans ensue, none of them particularly distinctive or intriguing, though the stars do exactly what’s expected of them. Caine is bitchy and suave, while Wood is aloof and gorgeous. So, if you want a minor jolt of star power delivered in attractive packaging, Peeper might entertain you—just remember to adjust your expectations.

Peeper: FUNKY

The Cheap Detective (1978)

          Yet another of the myriad film-noir spoofs that proliferated during the ’70s, The Cheap Detective is surprisingly underwhelming given its all-star cast and brand-name writer. Neil Simon, opting for broad farce instead of his usual domestic dramedy, weaves together storylines and stylistic tropes from assorted ’40s detective movies, mostly those starring Humphrey Bogart. Peter Falk stars as Lou Peckinpaugh, a San Francisco private eye who gets embroiled in a plot that’s a little bit Casablanca, a little bit Maltese Falcon, and a little bit of everything else. His partner gets killed, villains search for a cache of super-sized diamonds, and Lou juggles romantic intrigue with several dizzy dames. The movie’s gags are so silly that characters have names like Betty DeBoop, Jasper Blubber, and Jezebel Dezire.

          Based on this movie and Neil Simon’s other noir spoof from the same era starring Peter Falk, 1976’s Murder by Death, one gets the impression that Simon was trying to outdo Mel Brooks at the anything-goes approach to lampooning movie genres, but Simon simply couldn’t match the inspired lunacy that made Brooks’ spoofs so delirious. By trying to keep dialogue crisp and plotting rational, Simon’s attempt at this style falls somewhere between the extremes of proper storytelling and wild abandon. Thus, The Cheap Detective is fluffy without being truly irreverent and goofy without being truly insane—it’s like a second-rate Carol Burnett Show sketch, needlessly extended to feature length. What’s more, the movie is hurt by flat direction, as TV-trained helmer Robert Moore lacks the ability to generate exciting visuals.

          Yet another problem is the all-over-the-map acting. The most enjoyable performances, by Falk and supporting players Eileen Brennan, Stockard Channing, Madeline Kahn, and Fernando Lamas, wink at the audience without tipping into Borscht Belt excess. The most tiresome turns, by players including Ann-Margret, James Coco, Dom DeLuise, and Marsha Mason, fall into exactly that trap. (Though it must be said that Sid Caesar kills during one of the movie’s dumbest scenes, thanks to his legendary comic timing.) Some actors, however, seem completely adrift: Louise Fletcher, John Houseman, and Nicol Williamson strive to find consistent tonalities for their work, apparently receiving little guidance from Moore or the slapdash script. With this much talent involved, The Cheap Detective has a few bright spots, but the total package is quite blah.

The Cheap Detective: FUNKY