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(More customer reviews)Based on Ross McDonald's The Moving Target--one in a long series of crime novels featuring southern California PI Lew Archer--1966's Harper is a perfect complement to Point Blank, released the next year, in which Lee Marvin is tough first, cool second. Paul Newman as Harper is cool first, tough second. Neat trick.
While this is admittedly a little dated, it does bring back the 60s and in fact does a good job of it, too--even to the point of including a hippie pseudo-guru who's a front for smuggling in Mexicans from across the border, but who's got all the trademark paraphernalia--isolated wacky domicile, pet peregrine falcon with a fancy hood over its eyes, and, you know, flowing robes. Strother Martin does this role proud. It also has a "groovy chick" played by Pamela Tiffin who is, uh, a groovy chick--great bod, sexy face, and about as shallow as a frog pond in a drought.
All the middle aged women are great, really great: Julie Harris, Shelley Winters, Janet Leigh, and the great Lauren Bacall. Each one of the ladies is perfectly cast and does a terrific job, especially Shelly Winters as a liquored up former starlet who's now washed up and who sleeps it off, a lot.
Most of the cast is just plain fun to watch and it's also fun to see Newman as Harper put on various accents and personas to weasel and wheedle and wrangle information out of various folks. Harper gets beat up, but recovers fairly quickly (hey, he's the good guy; he has to), and this is OK because it's pretty easy to tell the film itself loves film noir but is subtly funning it at the same time it honors it. Sixties southern California noir--a great mix that Ross McDonald nailed in his novels and director Jack Smight follows pretty closely in the film.
It's about Harper trying to find the missing husband of wealthy wife Elaine Sampson (Bacall) and tracking the trail(s) that various people leave (or that Harper himself sniffs out) to do so. This is a standard noir/PI plot, but it's handled well here and, as noted, is really entertaining, mostly due to the terrific cast.
It would be nice if this was issued on DVD. Since there is no DVD of it, I managed to find a VCD (video compact disk) of it on another website. Worth owning, for sure.
Nice job.
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: Im Auftrag der reichen Mrs. Sampson sucht Privatdetektiv Harper ihren spurlos verschwundenen Ehemann. Scheinbar wurde der Millionär entführt â€" und Harper trifft gleich auf mehrere Verdächtige, denen er allesamt mehr als lästig ist, darunter seine Auftraggeberin (Lauren Bacall), ein Anwalt mit nervösem Finger am Abzug (Arthur Hill), ein Swimmingpool-Gigolo (Robert Wagner), ein versoffenes Ex-Starlet (Shelley Winters), ein Jazz-Junkie (Julie Harris) und Harpers Ex-Frau (Janet Leigh). Paul Newman zeigt eine unvergessliche Leistung als Titelheld dieses Kassenknüllers nach Ross MacDonalds Reiche sterben auch nicht anders. Newman hatte damals bereits 23 Filme gedreht, aber noch nie einen Detektiv gespielt â€" mit Ein Fall für Harper gab er dem Genre neue Impulse. In seinem cleveren Skript erweist sich William Goldman als Meister scharfzüngiger Dialoge.
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