|
Decent cops "when we can afford it," a whole city and a whole system in three days. The New York detective (Richard Widmark) and the partner who's given up smoking (Harry Guardino), readying themselves before busting down a suspect's door. "This is where the police officer rings the bell and waits to get invited in, right?" The unhinged hood (Steve Ihnat) seizes their pistols in an expert multi-plane composition (pair of disarmed flatfoots on the right of the frame, undressed squeeze hiding behind a mirrored door on the left) and escapes on the rooftop, Kurosawa's Stray Dog reverberates through the rest. The protagonist has no problem with the perks of authority, struggles with the neglected wife (Inger Stevens), crashes with the nightclub chanteuse (Sheree North). The opposite number is the rigid commissioner (Henry Fonda), who has matters of his own with a married mistress (Susan Clark) and a corrupt friend (James Whitmore). "Remember, people are more complicated than you'd like them to be." Ideals and compromises, the classical and the modern, the moral and the visceral, Don Siegel misses nothing in his wryest, most compassionate canvas. (The attention to class and power saliently shows Abraham Polonsky's hand in the screenplay.) Coney Island bookie (Michael Dunn), activist doctor (Raymond St. Jacques), jumpy pimp (Don Stroud), informant sot (Harry Bellaver), "human pattern behaviors" picked up along the daily grind. Shows of force, urban politics, the weary sigh of the lawman with no time for the missus bare under her slip. The end of the manhunt is a close-quarters shootout in a narrow kitchen, where Siegel's superb sense of montage rivals the contemporary fusillades of Penn and Peckinpah. "Good detectives are hard to find." Coogan's Bluff and Dirty Harry follow suit, Lumet and Rosi take note. With Warren Stevens, Bert Freed, Frank Marth, Lloyd Gough, Virginia Gregg, and Woodrow Parfrey.
--- Fernando F. Croce |