Gumshoe, '60's Style, Jun 25 2004

Small wonder Chandler purists detest this 1960's version of Phillip Marlowe. Like others of that period, the film sets about subverting an icon of the popular culture. Elliot Gould's Marlowe is anything but the hard-boiled professional audiences have come to admire and expect. Instead, he's grubby, feckless, and seemingly too disengaged to care about Chandler's prized passion: chasing after truth despite an uncaring corrupt society. Worse, one suspects Gould's Marlowe is a hippie at heart, ready to chuck it all and head for the woods with his beloved cat, a load of pot, and a world-weary "Its OK with me". Moreover, he's tossed about by most every event that comes his way, too burned-out to complete a thought and too bummed-out to press an investigation. He can't even find his cat. The slouching gait and hang-dog expression have all the assurance and verve of a man headed for a hanging. Bogart's classic impersonation, it ain't.

But Altman has laid a trap, one that only comes into focus at film's end. It's a startling yet oddly believable turn of events. Head doctors term this type of reconfiguration Gestalt Shift, and here the shift is a rewarding one, causing us to go back and re-examine the Gould character and his passage through what has gone before. It's also a brilliant stroke which at last links the counter-cultural Marlowe to the classic version. There are many fine touches in the film, including a highly effective use of sudden violence, particularly runty Henry Gibson's slam-bang humbling of lordly Sterling Hayden (he knows about drunks). And, for once, Altman's penchant for non-actors like Jim Bouton does little damage, although I wish the ending had skipped the ill-advised "Hooray for Hollywood". Nonetheless, this is one of the half dozen or so films that define counter-cultural film-making from the 60's. However, Its key Southern California ambience is best viewed, as other reviewers point out, in wide-screen. So catch up with that mode if you can.

Wacko, April 30 2004

Ten minutes into this supremely unfunny sex farce and I'm ready to chuck the cassette. First, there's Roland Young who's supposed to be an amusing drunk but is more like a ten day hangover, and second, there's Reginald Denny who's spent too many nights opening refrigerator doors because his face looks completely frozen. Then up pops this really zaftig little nuimber named Lillian Roth, who's also a dead-ringer for Shirley Temple's older sister, so I ease up on the remote. But another thirty minutes of Denny and Young and not even Roth's wiggling and warbling can compensate. Then just as I go for the off-button, somebody in Hollywood mixes up the reels and out of nowhere I'm looking at long lines of happy people singing and dancing and snaking their way into this big balloon, the likes of which no one has seen in 60 years. Must be a free meal, I figure, since this is 1930 and it is the Big Depression. But no, on the inside is an x-rated version of Flash Gordon in the royal court of Ming the Merciless, except these pagans are marching around to the clatter of trash can lids banging together like it's pick-up day on Mars. It's really wild, all the girls trying to see whose outfit is the weirdest and slinkiest, and dancing around like it's the last night of a fertility rite, while all the guys are going absolutely crazy. Right then I'm wishing I was born a lot sooner, especially when the mysterious Madam Satan appears, looking like the slithery serpent from the Garden of Eden. Right away I know she's one of the director's favorites because he keeps angling his camera toward her chest area. So what do I care that this second movie has no plot, what with these lunatics in charge, who knows what'll happen next. Then, just as I'm really into all the drunken revelry, up pops Denny and Young again, and I know the Hollywood bigshots aren't as smart as people say, otherwise these two lunkheads would not be allowed to ruin another few reels. But there's Young anyway, yukking it up like he's really funny, and there's Denny still trying to get his face unstuck. And, sure enough, there's Roth, looking as cute and dimpled as ever, except this time they've stuck weird feathers in her at all angles like she's been plucked by a blind guy. But she doesn't care, because she keeps on singing her little heart out and I think I'm in love. Anyway, everyone knows that with all this sinning going on and a character like Madam Satan in charge, the wrath of God can't be far behind. And sure enough, just as they auction off the girl with six arms, down comes this bolt of lightning and there goes the balloon spinning up toward the heavens. But then God gets his bearings back, and back down goes the balloon, with all the pagans screaming and yelling and becoming instant converts. I don't want to give away the ending, except to say miracles do happen, since the outside of this balloon suddenly sprouts more parachute drops than the jump schools at 82nd Airborne. Ordinarily, I would figure I dreamed all this weird stuff, but even with an empty 12-pack my dreams are never, never this weird. I know there is a moral to this movie, which must be that sin shouldn't look like too much fun, otherwise the killjoys and fussbudgets among us will make sure movies show only good things like twin-beds, closed-mouth kissing, and dreary couples named Rock and Doris. And that will be the end of really wacko movies like this one.