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List Price: $19.98 | | Label: Warner Home Video
Salesrank: 26986
Released: November 14, 2006 |
| Our Price: $5.46 |
| Used Price: $7.19 |
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MPAA Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
: Im Auftrag der reichen Mrs. Sampson sucht Privatdetektiv Harper ihren spurlos verschwundenen Ehemann. Scheinbar wurde der Millionär entführt â€" und Harper trifft gleich auf mehrere Verdächtige, denen er allesamt mehr als lästig ist, darunter seine Auftraggeberin (Lauren Bacall), ein Anwalt mit nervösem Finger am Abzug (Arthur Hill), ein Swimmingpool-Gigolo (Robert Wagner), ein versoffenes Ex-Starlet (Shelley Winters), ein Jazz-Junkie (Julie Harris) und Harpers Ex-Frau (Janet Leigh). Paul Newman zeigt eine unvergessliche Leistung als Titelheld dieses Kassenknüllers nach Ross MacDonalds Reiche sterben auch nicht anders. Newman hatte damals bereits 23 Filme gedreht, aber noch nie einen Detektiv gespielt â€" mit Ein Fall für Harper gab er dem Genre neue Impulse. In seinem cleveren Skript erweist sich William Goldman als Meister scharfzüngiger Dialoge.
Description of Harper:
The reason to see Harper is the kooky mid-Sixties design, the peculiar over-the-hill-gang supporting cast, and the crazy Rat Pack lingo written by famed screenwriter William Goldman. And, of course, Paul Newman fans will want to see their guy in the full flower of his anti-hero hero phase. Anyone seeking a decent adaptation of Ross Macdonald's great series of detective novels will, however, be sorely disappointed. Macdonald's Lew Archer is a melancholy knight who operates in an increasingly somber tangle of family crimes; the movie's Lew Harper is a wisecracking hepcat who mugs his way through an indifferent missing-persons investigation. (Frank Sinatra, who was offered the role, would have been a better fit than Newman.) The cast includes Lauren Bacall, Janet Leigh, Julie Harris, and Shelley Winters as various femmes, none of them especially fatale, and Robert Wagner has one of his better roles as a kind of cabana boy to the rich. Strother Martin pops up as a bearded guru with a love temple on top of a Southern California mountain. The director is Jack Smight, whose career was largely made up of TV work. This was the first Goldman script to be made into a film, based on Macdonald's novel The Moving Target; as Goldman states in an enjoyable DVD commentary track, the name Lew Archer was switched to Harper because of Macdonald's reluctance to sign away franchise rights to his private eye's name, not because Newman wanted to have another movie with an "H" title (after The Hustler and Hud). That clears up a long-running urban legend. Newman did make another Macdonald adaptation, The Drowning Pool, in 1975 again using the Harper name. For a much better mid-sixties cool private-eye picture, see Blake Edwards' Gunn. --Robert Horton
Harper Reviews:
Classic Newman 
2009-10-06 - This smooth, smart mystery film stars Paul Newman as Lew Harper, an LA private eye with a busted marriage, a down-at-the-heels Porsche, and enough attitude for three shamuses (shami?). Harper is a certified smart-#ss -- and no one does smart-#ss the way Newman did it. The movie is slick, cynical, and funny -- a pleasure that's downright addictive. Try it; you'll like it.
The Cringing Sixties 
2009-03-30 - The social ferment of the '60s was a great stimulant to pop music, but for popular movies, not so much. Maybe because it took a heck of a lot more money to produce a movie than an LP. Movie producers with big bucks on the line shied from anything radically new, or fatally watered down anything true to what was going on out in the streets. Certainly lots of '60s movies just embarrassed themselves trying to be au courant: Peter Sellers movies like "The Party" and "What's New Pussycat" come painfully to mind.
"Harper," sadly, is one of those. It's an embarrassing, tedious mid-sixties updating of the whole Raymond Chandler L.A.-noir style, with Paul Newman in an off-kilter performance failing to find a way to play a hip '60s version of Sam Spade cool. (Steve McQueen managed it beautifully a couple of years later in "Bullitt.")
That failure of translation--from Chandler's dead-pan '40s to Byrds-era '60s--is "Harper" all over. The narcotized, narcissistic poor little rich girl/sex kitten from "The Big Sleep" makes her appearance here doing (ouch) the boogaloo in a bikini at the end of a diving board. Newman's Harper tries trading drinks for info with Shelley Winter's blowzy booze-hound at the requisite dive-bar-with-character; soon they're out on the dance floor fruggin' (wince) with the kids. Dives-with-character don't HAVE dance floors, and they certainly don't have house bands that look like Tommmy James and the Shondells.
Really, I have no idea what movie most of the four and five star posters here are talking about. I saw "Harper" recently at the American Film Institute's fine theater outside Washington, and even though I'm a Newman fan and was in a sentimental mood following his sad passing, I walked out half way through. I just couldn't take it anymore.
Just rent "The Big Sleep" or "The Maltese Falcon" for the fifth time--or try "The Late Show" or "The Long Goodbye," more successful '70s turns on the same Chandleresque base material. But stay away from this one.
West Coast Cool - Told Like It Probably Happened
2009-01-29 - Harper is one of those movies that makes practical spiritual sense to me. The movie develops people's attitudes and the flow of facts the way these things would develop in a real investigation. How do I know - I was a policeman for 30-plus years. It's a movie about people who can afford a private eye and an expensive attorney. The kind of people that don't want to live their lives in the same manner that they want everyone to think that they do - rich hypocrites. They pay enough to get the job done right but somehow fail to inspire loyalty and trust.
Harper does his job, gets his butt kicked, kicks some butt and figures out that old friends, who have saved your butt, are more important than ethics or philosophy! In the end, Harper knows a little more about who he really is. More importantly, he gains clarity from his interaction with some bad people rather than from an intellectual pursuit.
Hey, it's an entertaining movie about a kidnap/homicide. The victim is a rich man who plays with the wrong crowd and looses. It's about an LA P.I. that isn't taking pictures of guys cheating on their wives; at least at the moment. It's an old time detective movie set in the late fifties or early sixties. It has a great list of actors. The architecture is great too!
If you like it - the sequel is "The Drowning Pool!" You might want to try China Town, The Two Jakes, LA Confidential and the Black Dahlia too.
Newman At His Best
2008-10-08 - Besides this being just a flat out great detective story, it has style and character. It's great entertainment, and solid acting from all involved like Robert Wagner, Julie Harris and Arthur Hill. If you like beautiful damsels in distress, you won't find one anymore lovely than actress Pamela Tiffin. I also love the two extras on the DVD. Introduction by TCM host Robert Osborne and commentary by the actual screenwriter William Goldman. If you love classic detective drama, this is a must have.
Paul Newman is ice cool in Harper 
2008-09-18 - This is an interesting film. Newman plays Lew Harper who is kind of like a groovy 60's version of Phillip Marlowe; sardonic, tough, irresistable to women. While the movie is dated and sexist, it is well worth viewing, not just for Newman's charismatic performance but for some brilliant supporting roles. Janet Leigh plays his bitter estranged wife, Shelley Winters is poignant as a sloppy barroom slattern, Robert Wagner is a breezy, easy and amoral but hides an unexpected secret. Best of all is Lauren Bacall who purrs, growls and hisses in a scene stealing performance as the cynical woman who enlists Harper's services. Not a perfect movie but immensely entertaining.
