Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Harper Blu-ray Movie Review

Cool Hand Marlowe

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 17, 2018

By the mid-Sixties, filmed detective stories had migrated from local cinemas to series TV. Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and the Thin Man had been replaced by the likes of Peter Gunn, Honey West and the residents of 77 Sunset Strip (and many others would follow). But an aspiring young screenwriter named William Goldman decided to try reviving the genre for the movies with an adaptation of Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series, and his script caught the interest of one of Hollywood's then-leading stars, Paul Newman. Newman's participation attracted both studio backing and an exceptional supporting cast, and the combination of the star's appeal and the sheer novelty of a detective tale reappearing on the silver screen made Harper a hit. (The detective's name was changed because studio executives didn't like "Archer", and the replacement began with an "H" because Newman considered it a lucky letter after The Hustler and Hud.)

Goldman would go on to become a celebrated writer for and about the movies. He won his first Oscar for reuniting with Newman to script Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and his second for wrestling the Woodward and Bernstein account of their Watergate investigation into a compelling thriller in All the President's Men. He created a comedy classic with his screen adaptation of his own novel, The Princess Bride, and one of the best Stephen King adaptations with Misery. He managed to pursue a lucrative career as an uncredited script doctor, while simultaneously writing acerbic insider accounts of the film industry, including Adventures in the Screen Trade, where he memorably proclaimed that "Nobody knows anything".

Unfortunately, what Goldman could not do was interest Newman in the sequel to Harper that he desperately wanted to write. Nine years after Harper's success, Newman would revisit the character with a different creative team in The Drowning Pool, but by then TV so thoroughly dominated the traditional detective genre—think Columbo, Mannix, Cannon and The Rockford Files, just to name a few—that Hollywood had been forced to reinvent it with twisted tales like Klute and Chinatown. Even with Newman reprising the character, his second Harper film couldn't buck the larger Zeitgeist, and the sequel barely made an impression.

Today, more than five decades later, there's been a curious reversal of fortune in which the unsuccessful sequel has aged better than the more successful original. Viewers interested in doing their own comparison, not to mention Newman fans and mystery junkies, can now revisit both films in sensational new 1080p transfers from the Warner Archive Collection.

Harper begins in the classic style of hard-boiled detective fiction when a private eye named Lew Harper (Newman) is summoned from his L.A. office to the home of a wealthy client in the coastal enclave of Santa Teresa (which was Ross Macdonald's fictional stand-in for Santa Barbara). The client is Elaine Sampson, who is played by Lauren Bacall in what amounts to an inside joke, given her role as the sultry elder daughter of Philip Marlowe's client in The Big Sleep. Elaine's husband, a rich landowner named Ralph Sampson, has disappeared, and she wants Harper to find him—or maybe she just wants the P.I. to confirm that Ralph is dead, since there's obviously no love lost between them and Elaine would inherit everything. A horseback riding accident shortly after she married Ralph has left Elaine confined to a wheelchair, and she's saddled with a hostile stepdaughter named Miranda (Pamela Tiffin), whose boyfriend is the family's private pilot, Allan Taggert (Robert Wagner). Despite being nominally attached, Miranda makes herself available to any man she finds attractive in a manner that recalls Carmen Sternwood, another character from The Big Sleep. (When she tries to seduce Harper, he's about as receptive as Bogart's Marlowe was to Carmen.)

Harper gets the assignment through the Sampson family lawyer, Albert Graves (Arthur Hill), a former prosecutor who's an old friend from Harper's previous career in law enforcement. Graves himself is in love with Miranda, although he's well aware that the age difference makes him an unlikely suitor. But Harper isn't one to judge, since his own marriage—to Susan (Janet Leigh)—is falling apart.

Harper has barely begun his efforts to find Ralph Sampson when he finds himself entangled in overlapping webs of deceit and criminality. Like any good investigator, he assumes that everyone is lying to him, and he's rarely wrong. He quickly finds his way to Fay Estabrook (Shelley Winters), a formerly glamorous starlet, but now overweight and alcoholic, and her quietly menacing husband, Dwight Troy (Robert Webber). A lounge singer with fresh track marks on her arms, Betty Fraley (the legendary Julie Harris), gets Harper beat up by her protector, a bruiser known as "Puddler" (Roy Jenson). By far the most outlandish character Harper encounters is a self-proclaimed holy man named Claude (Strother Martin, a specialist in outlandish characters), who holds court with his pet falcon in the so-called Temple in the Clouds, high atop a mountain peak that Ralph Sampson gave to Claude on a drunken whim. Claude tells Harper that "I only want to increase the amount of love in this world", but Harper suspects he has other ambitions (and rightly so).

Director Jack Smight (No Way to Treat a Lady) relies on Newman's inimitable cool and the talents of his supporting players to sustain the viewer's interest while the plot slowly unwinds and the various schemes are revealed. The operative word, however, is "slowly". Harper moves at a stately pace that will try the patience of anyone used to the crackling efficiency of classic thrillers like The Big Sleep, Murder, My Sweet or The Maltese Falcon. Harper was Smight's second feature film after many years of directing TV, and he stages scenes as if he were breathing a sigh of relief that he's been liberated from television's budgetary and time constraints. One can understand the temptation to let great actors have fun with Goldman's sharply written dialogue (much of which, the writer admits, he lifted from Macdonald), but lingering over clever exchanges can begin to feel like stalling when it's done to excess. (Editor Stefan Arnsten, another TV veteran, should have been tougher in the cutting room.)

Still, Harper has its pleasures, especially in Newman's comically cynical reactions to the rogues, liars and lushes strewn throughout the film's California landscape. His exchanges with young Miranda are especially memorable. When she stretches out on the nearest bed trying to seduce him, she coyly asks: "Don't you think I'm attractive?" To which Harper replies: "You're young, rich, and beautiful, and my wife is divorcing me. What do you think I think?" Then he makes the right choice and throws her out.

Harper Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Harper was shot by legendary cinematographer Conrad Hall, who would win his first Oscar for his reunion with Paul Newman and screenwriter William Goldman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. (His second was for American Beauty and his third, posthumously, for Road to Perdition, which reunited him with Newman yet again.) Hall's work in Harper required him to create a visually coherent narrative out of wildly disparate environments, from Claude's Temple in the Clouds to the shadowy marine warehouse filled with huge propellers and anchors, where Harper battles an adversary. (A later scene with Harper and Graves searching a derelict ship is equally challenging—and memorable.) Hall, who would later say that he was afraid of darkness in film, still managed to light dark scenes beautifully—and notice how he always arranged to get a key light on his actors, especially his star's famous face, even in the dimmest of scenes.

For this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection, an interpositive was scanned at 2K by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility. This was the same IP used to transfer Harper for its 2006 DVD, but here it receives the benefit of far more advanced technology for both scanning and color correction. MPI had the benefit of a dye-transfer Technicolor print as a color reference, and the result is an exquisite reproduction of Harper's stylized Sixties design, which captures California fashion and decor on the cusp of its transformation by the brewing counterculture. Blacks are deep and solid, sharpness and detail are exceptional, and the film's grain is naturally and finely rendered. Harper doesn't have a particularly rich palette, except for occasional flashes of brighter colors, usually associated with a female character (note how Lauren Bacall's Elaine makes her first appearance under the artificial glow of tanning lamps). The predominant hues are varieties of gray and brown, like the dull shades of Harper's junk heap of a car, of which the faded paint and mismatched door are an appropriate metaphor for the owner's life.

As per its usual practice, WAC has mastered Harper at a high average bitrate, here 34.99 Mbps.

Harper Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Harper's original mono track has been taken from the magnetic master and encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The mags were found to be in very good condition and required only minimal cleanup. It's a solidly serviceable mono track that effectively prioritizes the dialogue while accentuating it with environmental sound effects appropriate to the diverse locales in which Harper finds himself, from a loud airfield to the various nightclubs inhabited by Fay Estabrook and Betty Fraley to the silent mountain top where Claude performs his acts of worship (and possibly something else). The dynamic range is acceptable for the period, and the score by Johnny Mandel (who would reteam with Newman for The Verdict) provides a suitably jaunty accompaniment to Harper's roving investigation of a case where nothing is what it seems.

Harper Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2006 DVD of Harper, with the omission of the TCM introduction by Robert Osborne. The trailer has been remastered in 1080p.

• Commentary with Screenwriter William Goldman: Goldman is famous for his acerbic and irreverent observations about the film industry, and this commentary is entirely in character. Acknowledging that he hasn't seen the film in almost forty years, Goldman gives his account of how the project was initiated and tells stories about Newman and the supporting cast. He also freely airs his discontent with the state of 21st Century filmmaking. There are some long pauses in the final half hour, but even so this is a commentary worth hearing.



• Trailer (1080p; 2.40:1; 3:47): In some ways, the trailer offers a more memorable slant on the title character than the film, as Julie Harris, Janet Leigh, Pamela Tiffin and Shelley Winters address the camera in character, with original dialogue specially written for the trailer. The approach plays on Newman's youthful status as a sex symbol with the closing tagline: "Girls go for Harper . . . Harper goes for girls."

Harper Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Harper isn't among Newman's better films, but it was a box office hit and is remembered fondly by its fans. For them, and just for anyone who enjoys watching what the star could do in his prime with juicy lines like what Goldman wrote for him, WAC has brought the film to Blu-ray in high style with a brilliant image showcasing the work of a master cinematographer. Highly recommended as a Blu-ray; the film may be an acquired taste.