Mysterical-E

I Like 'Em Tough

THE TEN BEST PRIVATE EYE MOVIES
by Jim Doherty

Last column I stated that there were two kinds of people, those who make top-ten lists, and those who don’t. I, of course, am one of those who do.

This can cause problems. Someone once said that making a top ten list is a great way to make ten friends and a hundred thousand enemies. But, on the other hand, there’s no point in having opinions if they don’t get expressed.

The first top ten list I ever made, at least for publication, gave my choices for the ten best private eye novels in an article that was published in Mystery Readers Journal. That time I didn’t even make ten friends. Three of the choices were by Dashiell Hammett. Two were by Raymond Chandler. And, when I got to the tenth entry, I wussed out and, instead of making a firm choice, listed six honorable mentions.

Since then, I’ve been a little more disciplined. Never more than one book by a given author, and always ten books, not nine and a “mugwump” back-up list of runners-up.

Last issue, I listed my ten favorite PI television shows. I thought that, this issue, I’d follow up by listing my ten favorite PI movies. For this list, I didn’t impose the same limitation I did for the TV list, that the films be original to the medium. It seemed an appropriate limitation for TV, but less so for movies, perhaps because so many of the best did, in fact, derive from novels or short stories. However, I did impose a limitation that no more than one film based on the work of a given author could make the list.

That said, here are my choices:

The Maltese Falcon (Warners, 1941), written and directed by John Huston, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett

The best PI movie of them all, bar none. Humphrey Bogart, though he doesn’t really look that much like Sam Spade as described by Hammett in the book, absolutely owns the part, and his performance in this film and, several years later, in The Big Sleep (Warners, 1946), serve to make him the actor most identified with private eye roles. All the other members of the cast, Mary Astor as the feminine interest, Peter Lorre as the mysterious figure from the East, Elisha Cook, Jr., as the “gunsel,” and Barton McLane and Ward Bond as the cops, are superb. Special mention should be made of Sydney Greenstreet’s Oscar-nominated performance as Casper Gutman, the Fat Man, a part that he seems to have born to play. It’s also one of the most faithful adaptations of a novel to the screen I’ve ever seen. It seems fitting that this best of all private eye movies should be based on the best of all private eye novels, which, in turn, partly derived from the best of all private eye short stories, Hammett’s “The Gutting of Couffignal” (Black Mask, December 1925). Warners’ 1931 version of Falcon, starring Ricardo Cortez as Spade, is also quite watchable, though not in the same class as the 1941 remake.

Murder, My Sweet (RKO, 1945), written by John Paxton, based on the novel Farewell, My Lovely (Knopf, 1940) by Raymond Chandler; directed by Edward Dmytryk

A list of top PI films could easily be dominated by movies featuring Chandler’s iconic sleuth, Philip Marlowe. In the 1940’s alone four different studios made four different “A” list films based on Marlowe novels, two of them classics, and the other two having much to recommend them despite being disappointing in some respects. Four more Marlowe films in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s added more contenders to the list. Of them all, Murder, My Sweet strikes me as the best. Indeed, not only the best Marlowe adaptation, but, with the clear exception of The Maltese Falcon, the best of all private eye films. It stars Dick Powell, the best of all screen Marlowes (and, yes, that does include Bogart’s turn in The Big Sleep, though he’s a close second). A former crooner in Busby Berkeley musicals, Powell embodied the character’s toughness, integrity, and ironic humor better than anyone else who’s ever tackled the role. Paxton’s script was an excellent adaptation of the book. Dmytryk’s direction was first-rate. The visual imagery was practically a primer on how to make a film noir. And the supporting cast, particularly Claire Trevor as the femme fatale, Ann Shirley as the “nice girl,” and Mike Mazurki as a brutal, but curiously sympathetic ex-con, is top-flight. I should also mention here that the remake, Farewell, My Lovely (Avco-Embassy, 1975), starring Robert Mitchum, is also quite excellent. While it cuts some characters and plot devices that were used in the Powell film, it includes aspects of the plot that were cut from that film, so that, if you see them both, you essentially get the whole novel. Mitchum is perhaps a decade or two older than he should be for the part, but one is struck by what an awesome Marlowe he’d have been in his prime.

The Killers (Universal, 1946), written by Anthony Veiller, based on the short story by Ernest Hemingway; directed by Robert Siodmak

The first twenty or so minutes of this film is an almost line-for-line adaptation of the Hemingway tale about two professional hit men who arrive in a small town, terrorize the employees in a restaurant there, then set off on their assignment, the murder of a comparative stranger who’s been living there a short time. From that point it treats the short story as, essentially, the first chapter of a novel, and the rest of the film is, for practical purposes, an original screenplay that sets out to answer the questions left unresolved in the story. Why did the victim, “Swede” Andreson, get murdered, and why didn’t he try to escape? The guy seeking the answers is a tough, savvy insurance investigator, Jim Reardon (Edmund O’Brien), who, in a manner reminiscent of the newsreel reporter in Citizen Kane (RKO, 1941), uncovers the past of the Swede (Burt Lancaster, in his screen debut), then uses the info to nail the two contract killers (Charles McGraw and William Conrad), and identify the people who hired them. Ava Gardner, as the femme fatale, also made her debut in this film.

Plunder of the Sun (Warners, 1953), written by Jonathan Latimer, based on the novel by David Dodge; directed by John Farrow

Glenn Ford plays Dodge’s expatriate PI, Al Colby, in this adaptation of second of the three novels in the series. It could be described as a deft recycling of elements from two classic Bogart films, the aforementioned Maltese Falcon, and The Treasure of Sierra Madre (Warners, 1949), with a little bit of “Indiana Jones” thrown in, as Colby contends with a group of nasties to find ancient Aztec treasure in Mexico. Ford, a staple in noir crime films of the ‘40’s and ‘50’s, is Ford-tough as Colby. Patricia Medina is fetching as a girl who may be Ann-Shirley-nice or Claire-Trevor-dangerous. Francis L. Sullivan as a Casper Gutman type, and Sean McClory as an Irish version of Joel Cairo, are both effective. The screenwriter, Jonathan Latimer, was himself an accomplished author of PI fiction, with the Bill Crane series, and a superb “stand-alone” private eye novel, Solomon’s Vineyard (Metheun, 1941), to his credit. He was an excellent choice to adapt Dodge’s novel.

Kiss Me Deadly (United Artists, 1955), written by A.I. Bezzerides, based on the novel by Mickey Spillane; directed by Robert Aldrich

I’m conflicted about this one. Aldrich was not a Spillane fan, and I am. Further, Aldrich intended Kiss Me Deadly to be an anti-Spillane movie, and to some degree, he’s successful, which disposes me to dislike the film. I also very much like the first film version of a Spillane novel, I the Jury (UA, 1953), a comparatively faithful adaptation, in which Biff Elliott is not bad at all as Mike Hammer, and in which the cinematographer is the legendary John Alton, the man who put the “noir” in “film noir.” And I’m a big fan of The Girl Hunters (Colorama, 1963), in which Spillane himself stars as Hammer. But, almost against my will, I’m forced to admit that Kiss Me Deadly, featuring Ralph Meeker as Hammer, is the best of the three. Set in Los Angeles, rather than New York, it depicts Hammer as a vain, bullying, self-involved keyhole peeper who uses his lovely secretary, Velda, to set up husbands on behalf of their well-paying wives. But, despite his less endearing traits, when the chips are down, he turns out, in spite of himself (and, to a degree, despite Aldrich’s antipathy), to be a top-notch detective, a harder-boiled egg than anyone else he encounters, and a guy who’s loyal to his friends. Superb photography, and great performances by Paul Stewart as a mob boss, and Albert Dekker as a mad scientist. Noir regulars Jack Lambert and Jack Elam are both effective as a pair of thugs in the pay of Stewart. The “macguffin” in this film (what Velda calls “the great whatsit”) is not a jewel-encrusted statuette of a predatory bird, nor golden Aztec artifacts, but what seems to be a nuclear bomb small enough to be carried around in a briefcase.

Harper (Warners, 1966), written by William Goldman, based on the novel The Moving Target (Knopf,1949) by Ross Macdonald; directed by Jack Smight

The private eye movie was revitalized by this adaptation of Ross Macdonald’s first Lew Archer novel. Deliberately reminiscent of ‘40’s-era PI films, Harper features Paul Newman in the title role, his name changed from “Archer,” possibly for copyright reasons, possibly to tie it in with Newman’s string of lucky “H” films like The Hustler (20th/Fox, 1961), Hud (Paramount, 1963), and Hombre (20th/Fox, 1967). Harper’s on a missing persons case, looking for a wealthy eccentric nobody much likes, but on whose money many are dependent. The missing persons case soon turns into a ransom kidnapping, which, naturally, pits our hero against an array of nasties that are, “as bad as there is in L.A. And that’s as bad as there is.” The supporting cast includes Lauren Bacall as Harper’s client, the invalid spouse of the kidnap victim, Janet Leigh as Harper’s ex-wife (a character never seen on-stage in the books), and Shelley Winters, Julie Harris, Robert Wagner, Strother Martin, and Robert Webber as characters displaying varying degrees of nastiness. In color, and mainly filmed in brightly lit settings, Harper lacks the visual flourishes of classic noirs from a decade or two earlier. In fact, but for its high-powered cast, it looks somewhat like a made-for-TV movie rather than a theatrical feature (director Jack Smight actually worked more often in TV than in movies). But that high-powered cast, and a first-rate script by William Goldman overcome any visual shortcomings. Paul Newman made a second appearance as Lew Harper in The Drowning Pool (Warners, 1975), based on Macdonald’s second Archer novel. Some have suggested that Harry Ross, the aging private eye Newman played in Twilight (Paramount, 1998), is meant to be Harper/Archer somewhat past the prime of young adulthood.

Gunn (Paramount, 1967), written by Blake Edwards and William Peter Blatty, based on the TV series Peter Gunn (ABC, 1958-60; NBC, 1960-61); directed by Edwards

By contrast, this film, though based on a TV series, directed by a filmmaker who got his start on TV, and featuring a cast of actors known mostly for their TV work, looks far more like a theatrical movie than Harper. Craig Stevens as the titular private eye, still wearing his superbly tailored Brooks Brothers suits, still loving cool jazz, still thoroughly unflappable in the face of danger, was the only cast member retained from the original series. Edward Asner replaced Herschel Bernardi as Lt. Jacobi; perennial TV guest star Laura Devon took over the part of Edie Hart from Lola Albright; and songstress Helen Traubel was cast as night club owner “Mother,” a part originated on TV by Hope Emerson, and later continued by Minerva Urecal. The plot, in which Gunn investigates the murder of a mob boss to whom he owed a debt (the gangster once saved his life), seems to be an expanded version of “The Kill,” the half-hour debut episode of the series, first aired on Sep. 22, 1958. Visually arresting, the socko climax of Gunn, a shootout in a mirror maze, seems to derive equally from the final action set-piece of Orson Welles’s famous noir movie, The Lady from Shanghai (Columbia, 1947) and the closing line of Mickey Spillane’s third Mike Hammer novel, Vengeance Is Mine! (Dutton, 1950).

Chinatown (Paramount, 1974), written by Robert Towne; directed by Roman Polanski

By the ‘70’s, the hard-boiled private eye seemed to some an anachronism. The solution? Make private eye movies period pieces. Jack Nicholson, in an Oscar-nominated turn, stars as Jake Gittes, a Depression-era private investigator in Los Angeles, specializing in divorces cases. Hired to follow a husband suspected of cheating, he suddenly finds himself caught up in a murder case with heavy-duty political overtones. In color, and brightly lit, the film is rather deliberately not visually reminiscent of the classic noirs, but neither is it a pastel-looking made-for-TV movie. A great supporting cast, including Faye Dunaway (another Oscar nominee) as Gittes’s client, legendary director/screenwriter John Huston as Ms. Dunaway’s father, a sinister political boss, Perry Lopez as Gittes’s former police colleague, and Roman Polanski himself, in Hitchcockian cameo, as a knife-wielding thug. A sequel, The Two Jakes (Paramount, 1990), was set in the post-war era, but took a thoroughly undeserved critical shellacking for the crime of not being as good as Chinatown. The lack of critical and commercial success makes it unlikely that the third part of the planned trilogy, Gittes vs. Gittes, will ever be made. In addition to the nominations won by Nicholson and Ms. Dunaway, Chinatown won Robert Towne an Oscar in the “Original Screenplay” category, and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and six other Oscars. It also won a bunch of Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and the Edgar for Best Mystery Screenplay.

The Late Show (Warners, 1977), written and directed by Robert Benton

One way to deal with the anachronistic aspects of the classic private eye figure is to set the story in the past, as Chinatown did. Another is to make the hero a figure of the past, still operating in the present, with his best years long behind him. The Late Show, with Art Carney playing semi-retired private detective Ira Wells, takes the latter course. Carney portrays Wells as an elderly, sickly man (actually he was only 59 when he made the film, not a spring chicken, but certainly not as old as the character he plays), long past his prime, but still possessed of enough piss and vinegar give the bad guys a credible battle. In the midst of investigating the murder of his former partner (played by Howard Duff, radio’s Sam Spade), a ditzy, hippie-dippy type played by Lily Tomlin hires him to find her cat. The two cases dovetail, and the old-school private eye and the young, New Age hippie chick find they make an effective team. Benton got an Oscar nomination for his script, and won an Edgar. L.A. Morse’s novel, The Old Dick (Avon, 1981), is another Edgar-winning work (in the paperback original category) that examines the theme of an elderly, hard-boiled private eye. Screenwriter/director Benton would also return to that theme in the aforementioned Twilight.

Memento (Newmarket Films, 2001), written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on the short story “Memento Mori” (Esquire, March 2001) by Jonathan Nolan

When Jonathan Nolan had an idea for a story about a man with a form of amnesia that keeps him from forming short-term memories (while still recalling his identity, and long-term past), who is trying to solve the murder of his wife, he showed a copy of an early draft to his brother, filmmaker Christopher Nolan. Christopher, with Jonathan’s permission, immediately started work on a movie version. Although Jonathan’s short story (or at least an initial draft) preceded Christopher’s script, the two brothers worked on their separate projects more or less simultaneously, and Jonathan’s short story was first published the same month that Christopher’s film was released. Thus Christopher’s film developed independently of Jonathan’s story, and, while it retains the key plot element of a man with anterograde amnesia trying to solve his wife’s murder, it goes its own way. One important change Christopher made, important at least as far as the film’s eligibility to be considered for this list is concerned, is that Christopher’s hero, Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), is a professional detective. Specifically an insurance investigator (or at least a former insurance investigator). But, given his memory problems, his professional skill set is of little help in his quest. In an attempt to keep from repeating work he’s already completed, he is continually taking Polaroid pictures and writing notes on the back to give him a constant frame of reference, or tattooing information he has learned on his body, to keep a permanent record of vital clues he’s uncovered. The film is structured in a non-linear fashion that gives the audience a sense of what Shelby’s predicament is like. A startlingly original film, with an excellent performance by Pearce as the tortured hero, and, as is usual in great PI films, a top-notch supporting case, including Joe Pantoliano as a street contact of Shelby’s who may be helping him, or may be hindering him, and Carrie Ann Moss as a bartender who seems sympathetic to Shelby’s problem, but isn’t. It’s confusing, but fascinating, and, if you hang in there, thoroughly engrossing. An Edgar winner for Best Screenplay.

So there they are. A lot of great films get passed over whenever a Top Ten list is made. Some of you might have included ‘40’s-era noirs like The Dark Corner (20th/Fox, 1946) or Out of the Past (RKO, 1947). Some might have gone back even farther, and mentioned Depression-era films like Private Detective 62 (Warners, 1933) or The Thin Man (MGM, 1934). Shaft (MGM, 1971) arguably started the whole “blax-ploitation” trend of the ‘70’s, while The Conversation (Paramount, 1974) examined the ethics of the profession. The Bodyguard (Warners, 1992), as much a romance as a PI film, widened the audience for the genre. Gone Baby Gone (Miramax, 2007), like Harper four decades earlier, rejuvenated the genre.

All successful films. All well-made. All enjoyable. Some of them, arguably, classics. But the nature of a Top Ten film list, as I said in the beginning, is that it can only have ten films on it. And these are my ten.