Rent Harper (1966)

Comedy Thriller. - Harper review by Steve

Colourful, irreverent update of '30s pulp fiction to the 1960s. It's from a novel by Ross Macdonald, but it's essentially the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler. Paul Newman's insubordinate Lew Harper is an approximation of Philip Marlowe. The film even starts like The Big Sleep with the detective calling on the mansion of a man worth 100 million dollars. 

The wealthy industrialist has gone missing. His wife (Lauren Bacall!) wants him back. Harper picks up the trail leading from grifter to kook to goofball. From cameo to character actor to special guest star. This has a fabulous cast with Shelley Winters standing out as a gluttonous ex-film star and Pamela Tiffin memorable as the missing man's sexy daughter.

Harper discovers that everyone has a hand in the till, or worse. In true Chandler style, only the detective is spotless and even he has to enter the sewer to solve the crime. Newman gives a cartoonish performance as the freewheeling hero, continually adopting alter-egos with improvised accents. There's a lot of comedy.

Jack Smight was an inexperienced tv director and this is a mixed bag. The photography is attractive, but the film lacks suspense. The lively cast gives it energy. This was William Goldman's debut Hollywood screenplay and he rewards film buffs with many references to classic detective films, while leaving us with a souvenir of the far out nonconformism of the mid-sixties.