Peter Viney's Blog

Harper (US)
The Moving Target (UK)

1966

Directed by Jack Smight
Screenplay by William Goldman
Based on the novel “The Moving Target” by Ross McDonald

CAST

Paul Newman – Lew Harper, private detective
Lauren Bacall- Mrs Sampson, wife of Ralph
Julie Harris – Betty Fraley, druggy & lounge singer
Arthur Hill – Albert Graves,attorney
Janet Leigh- Susan Harper, wife about to divorce Lew
Pamela Tiffin – Miranda Sampson, daughter of Ralph
Robert Wagner- Allan Taggart, pilot, Miranda’s boyfriend
Robert Webber – Dwight Troy, Faye’s husband
Shelley Winters – Fay Estabrook, alcoholic ex-starlet
Strother Martin – Claude, a bogus guru

The 60s films revisited series continues…

So HMV had a Blu-ray special offer on the “Premium Collection” of classic films if you bought two. I wanted to get Barry Lyndon anyway (and a fabulous blu-ray transfer it is too) and Harper took my eye because I hadn’t heard of it. It’s only when I got home that I realized the UK DVD had reverted to the US title Harper for what we also knew as The Moving Target. 

Ah, the original British film title!

It was described as like the 40s films based on Raymond Chandler’s stories, and was Paul Newman’s first try as a detective. The detective in the original series by Ross McDonald (which ran to eighteen books) was called ‘Archer’ but because Paul Newman’s successes were Hud and The Hustler he asked for the name to be changed to begin with H. Not that he was superstitious.

The other attraction for me was that it was William Goldman’s first major script. He is the author of Adventures in The Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I Tell? on Hollywood scriptwriting, and as I mention in half these 1960s retrospective reviews, my MA thesis was on Hollywood & The Novel. I like reading about screenwriters.

Lauren Bacall acts from a seated position

Then there’s the cast … Lauren Bacall, Shelley Winters, Robert Wagner. Lauren Bacall was wanted especially for her links with the true classics with Bogart, and it’s not a big part, and performed from a sitting position. But hey, it is Lauren Bacall. Greats? Maybe, but years later Paul Newman and Shelley Winters were both on the Johnny Carson Show and Shelley Winters expressed her regret that she had never worked with Paul Newman. Paul Newman reminded her of their joint work on Harper and she had totally forgotten it.

There you go, Shelley. You WERE in a film with Paul Newman.

The references were retro.

Jack Smight, Director, 1966 LA Times

JACK SMIGHT: Attempting a private eye story at the height of all these (James) Bonds could have been a risky business. We wanted to capture some of the qualities of Double Indemnity and all those earlier Raymond Chandlers and Hammets – in other words to do a really good movie movie – without being accused of retrogressing. I studied some of those pictures to see what made them tick. One great thing they had going for them was that the character people were so visually explicit: when Peter Lorre or Sidney Greenstreet walked in on Bogart you didn’t need an explanation. Today it’s harder to find them; they just aren’t being developed in the way they used to be

Ah. However, James Bond was never a “private eye.” Unfortunately the great character actors like Bacall and Winters here phoned in their dull performances. Paul Newman was the one who seems most committed.

LEW HARPER: Your husband keeps lousy company, Mrs Sampson, as bad as there is in LA, and tht’s as bad as it is.

William Goldman devotes a chapter to Harper in Adventures in The Screen Trade . The most memorable sequence in the film is the opening, where Lew Harper is desperate for a cup of coffee, and has to use the filter with yesterday’s grounds in from the waste bin, setting that he is impoverished and seedy. In 1966, his battered Porsche 356 Speedster could be passed off as an old wreck and further evidence of poverty (a well restored one would be $100,000 now). This is the opening scene you really have to put into any classic private eye movie. Goldman explains that it was only written after the rest of the film was completed, when Warner Brothersdecided it needed a credits / pre-credits sequence.

The best bit of the film is the first two minutes.

The story? Wikipedia has it in full. I can’t be bothered. Lew Harper (Paul Newman) has taken on a missing person case. Being a private eye, he obviously has issues with his miserable life and a wife who is about to divorce him. The multi-millionaire Ralph Sampson has disappeared somewhere between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, and his attorney, Rupert Graves (Arthur Hill) employs Harper who is an old pal. Ralph Sampson’s wife is paralyzed from the waist down (Lauren Bacall) and thinks he’s gone off with a floozy and doesn’t care about the sex, but knows that Ralph tends to fling his money around. The step-daughter Miranda (Pamela Tiffin) is a suspect in the disappearance, as is her boyfriend, Allan Taggart (Robert Wagner) who was the pilot of the private plane assigned to transport Ralph. Add an alcoholic overweight ex-starlet Faye Estabrook (Shelley Winters) and a  jazz singer Betty Fraley (Julie Harris) with trackmarks on her arm.

In those pre-cell phone days, any detective spent much of the day seeking out phone boxes and much time inside phone boxes/

Lots of suspicion, inexplicable guff about a “truck that goes through”,  and the obligatory 60s weird guru from the Holy Order of The Temple of The Clouds. Enter everyone else in a confusing story (Chandler trademark) full of creaky twists and turns,  that lacks the essential sense of humour of 70s TV detective series, and lacks the thrill and visceral danger of later ones.

The back projection in driving scenes is particularly poor throughout. They really scream studio. It made me wonder when they switched from actors sitting in a car in front of a film screen to putting a car on a low-loader and driving it around. You may wonder why open-top cars are so popular on film. It’s not just image and look, it’s the practicality of seeing the actors.

Pamela Tiffin as the stepdaughter, Miranda. Dreadful back-projected landscape.

I found the film insipid and wooden. Paul Newman thought it had a sense of humour. Wrong. The trouble is, material like this was on TV three or four times a week a decade later, and much of it was better than this … Colombo, Kojak, The Rockford Files, Streets of San Francisco, Starsky & Hutch, Moonlighting (especially). A sense of humour had become essential.  Fast forward to the 21st Century and we’re comparing 24 or The Wire. Funnily enough, the films this was paying homage to stand up to the passing of time way better and that may be as simple as that being in black & white removes comparison with TV and puts them into a whole different category.

I don’t know why I disliked Harper. Possibly it was that the night before we saw the Dunkirk episode of World’s On Fire and you realize that at the extreme upper end of TV series (The Confession, World’s On Fire, Peaky Blinders), and Netflix specials, script quality is in a different league.

The guru sequence

For an allegedly stellar screenwriter, much of the dialogue was ludicrously bad. Women are addressed as “dumpling” (please do not try this at home) and men are addressed as “old stick.” The guru (Strother Martin) sequence is so appalling in filming, concept and acting that it’s unintentionally hilarious. Even the subtitles (turned on to take screenshots) are ALL CAPS and look terrible.

The guru has spoken

Lew Harper has a classic silver Porsche 356 with one door and a bit of the next body panel in red primer. It can’t outrun a standard 60s sedan because the spark plugs have not been changed for 30,000 miles. Apparently, this results in it crashing. Where do you crash in California? Well, the only possibility is off the side of a mountain road and crashing down the slope. I’d totally lost any semblance of interest by this point.

The music by Andre Previn is that jarring jumpy jazzy stuff beloved of the era. You feel sorry for the bikini babe trying to writhe around to it.

CRITICS?

Formula California detection distinguished by its cast rather than ay special talent in the writing or presentation.
Halliwell’s Film Guide

Nothing needs justification less than entertainment: but when something planned only to entertain fails, it has no justification. A private eye movie without sophistication or style is ignominious.
Pauline Kael, 1968

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)