Paul Newman is Harper again!
According to Wiki, movie wanted to capitalize on the popularity of the Harper movie 9 years ago. One could ask why it took 9 years!(xxxx)
As a side note, Paul Newman appears to have NOT aged even a tiny bit in those 9 years 🙂
[born 1925 -> 41 for Harper -> 50 for this one]
Harper is still an LA detective , but he’s in Louisiana to help out his old flame Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward, his real life wife for 50 years!)!
The book on which this movie is based takes place in Los Angeles like other MacDonaled books, but the movie is relocated to the swamps and bayous of Louisiana. This made the whole thing feel a little off. Harper, especially as played by Paul Newman is such a So Cal guy, and here he is wandering through white trash trailer parks in Louisiana.
Watching the two movies back to back right now I’m noticing a LOT of structural similarities between the movies and also I imagine, the books too.
- Harper’s job is to rescue a damsel in distress.
The damsels are both extremely wealthy white ladies in big white houses- with suspect servants lurking suspiciously everywhere. 🙂
- In the first book, that lady (Lauren Bacall) is the iron ruler of the family.
- In this book that same position is taken by Olivia Devereaux, Iris domineering mother.
- Their husbands are absent, in different ways.
- In the first book hubby was kidnapped (and eventually killed).
- In the second he’s a closeted gay in an alcoholic stupor for the most movie.
- In both cases there is a very young, very nubile daughter that throws herself at Harper in the first minutes of the movie.
- Both are central to the cruel events that are the central tragedies of the movies.
The main characters:
- Paul Newman as Lew Harper
- Joanne Woodward as Iris Devereaux
- Richard Derr as James Devereaux
- Anthony Franciosa as Chief Broussard
- Murray Hamilton as J.Hugh Kilbourne
- Gail Strickland as Mavis Kilbourne
- Melanie Griffith as Schuyler Devereaux
The movie opens…
As the movie opens, Harper is getting into his 1970’s rent-a-car at the New Orleans.
[Already I miss the 60’s cars in the other Harper movie, which were so much cooler than 70’s cars]
He is driving to the Devereaux mansion, because Iris Devereaux has reached out to him all the way across the country for help.
Iris is getting blackmailed letters. She thinks from her former chaffeur, Pat Reavis, but in any event she wants Harper to get it sorted out.
Harper does his usual detecting thing, searching rooms, poking his nose there it’s not wanted, pissing everybody off, and getting information in the process.
He get abducted by thugs from Oil magnate J. Hugh Kilbourne who wants to get his greedy paws on a huge tract of swampland full of oil that is owned by the Devereaux’s.
Olivia Deveroux, the mean old lady who rules the family, is killed.
Everyone thinks Pat Reavis did it. Harper runs him down, then while he is bringing him in, they are waylaid and Reavis is killed.
Aside on culture
By now I (think I) can see why the producers move the movie to Louisiana, it’s just so colorful.
The first Harper movie featured many bleak So Cal industrial wasteland scenes.
- They found the old guy’s body in a decaying oil tanker.
- The bad policeman died by falling off a high catwalk into a assembly line of ship propellers in another abandoned factory. ugh.
All very appropriate to MacDonald’s bleak opinion of the dark underside of modern American culture. (boy would he have loved Trump!).
But if you are looking for seamy signs of human decay and organic decay, and the decline of civilization in general, Louisiana is the place for you!
Harper tracks down Reavis’ apartment. He gets knocked out while rifling through it.
Ht tracks town Reavis at his ex wife’s aartment. It tries to take himm in, but gets run off the road. Reavis gets killed in the gunfight.
Eventually Kilbourne abducts Harper again and his wife Mavis, and in a memorable scene locks them in a deserted sanitarium.
[Kilbourne’s mother has commited him there years ago, he didn’t like it, so he bought it and shut it down. :)]
They must have some kind of water therapy, because it’s a watertight room lined with white tile. Harper gets a weird idea to escape by filling the place with water till they can reach the ceiling where they will get out the skylight.
A really dumb idea.
Surprise, the skylights won’t open after being unused for 20 years, and they’re too thick to break. They woulda died if Kilbourne and his stooge didn’t come back in the morning to torture the, some more.
Things wind up pretty quick after that.
- Mavis kills Kilbourne
- “He was right, he would’ve gotten away with it.”
- Harper goes back to the Deveraux mansion / house of horrors.
- His beloved Iris has killed herelf.
- Chief Broussard is there and is distraught.
- He dated Iris 17 years ago, and regrets naver “taking her away from all this”
- The make sure you do the math so see that he’s probably Schuyler’s dad.
- Harper finds her at the pool of course.
- Harper lays it all out
- She was banging Reavis
- She wrote the nasty notes to Iris what brought Harper out here in the first place
- She killed Olivia,
- She didnt’ outright kill Iris, but egged her on to do it herself.
- Broussard is listening. He has a lot of emotions.
I just compared the Wiki pages for the book and this movie, and they are quite different!
Along with happening in different parts of the country, the book has a visiting English Professor who is a major player in the book plot but completely absent from the movie.