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The nocturnal waterfront is illuminated by machine-gun fire at the beginning, then by psychedelic credits and Henry Mancini's ominous ostinato. Peter Gunn (Craig Stevens), insouciant Fifties holdover in the modish Sixties, rather philosophical at an underworld honcho's funeral: "Immortality is a happy childhood. We grow up and we die. Worrying about it just gets us there a little sooner." Private eye, nightclub habitué, guide to Blake Edwards' corroded Los Angeles. Harpoons and detonations shape the investigation, among the bombshells is the half-dressed mystery gal (Sherry Jackson) who doesn't sit well with the jazzy squeeze (Laura Devon). The floating bordello is named "The Ark" (provocative twins are the specialty), the bounty offered by the madam (Marion Marshall) places the hero on the trail of the gangster (Albert Paulsen). Surveying matters is the police lieutenant (Ed Asner), who writes off humanity as "a temporary experiment on Earth." The other side of Edwards' inquisitive coin, a hard-boiled Clouseau in a metropolitan swamp, keenly concurrent with Godard's Made in U.S.A. The ritualized snap of noir dialogue, violence in strange, abrupt bursts—bullets used like toys at the arcade parlor, balls used like bullets at the squash court. The sloshed informer (J. Pat O'Malley) offers a crucial tidbit at breakfast but recoils from a beer, "like offering Count Dracula chicken soup." The camera mounted on a Ferris wheel lends a different angle of the Some Came Running carnival, a decimated chandelier caps the shootout in the mirrored chamber. (Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player pops in for a quick jest at the exploding dive: "May God strike me dead...") Corruption, elegance, brutality, sex, "you know, the right combination." Rush expands on the climax in Freebie and the Bean. With Helen Traubel, Jerry Douglas, Regis Toomey, George Murdock, Frank Kreig, and Alan Oppenheimer.
--- Fernando F. Croce |