Chandler
        
Director: Paul Magwood
Year: 1971
Rating: 5.0
They need a patsy. "I know just the perfect guy". That is Chandler, as in Raymond as he tells one person over the phone. A beat up, down on his luck P.I. who doesn't know when to quit. This is a homage of sorts to that other Chandler and his detective Marlowe. Not that Marlowe would have touched this case. As a warning, if you as many did, found The Big Sleep with Bogart and Bacall confusing, don't go anywhere near this one. You could spend a lifetime trying to figure out who is who and why they do the things they do. It is hard to know who to blame for such a narrative mess - the director and script writer Paul Magwood or the studio dickhead who took the film over and edited it like a serial killer. Magwood was so upset with the final product, that he took out an ad blaming the fellow. But that fellow says he did it because the film made no sense to him. So, who knows.

 

There are still things to like here should you be trapped in a room with only this film being available. Chandler is played by Warren Oates and his broken ugly pug, toothy smile and laconic manner is easy to take. Enjoyable in fact. He slides effortlessly through the film unaffected by how confusing it is. There is also a much too brief cameo by the noir girl herself, Gloria Grahame. A long way past her flirty self in It's a Wonderful Life but still looking good.  Chandler is hired to keep an eye on a woman arriving on a train and report in. Katherine (Leslie Caron) is running away from a powerful man and he wants her back. Others want to use her to get at this man. There are conversations with these people discussing it, but it only makes it murkier - and either the dialogue is stilted or the acting is. 

 

Chandler follows her to a mortuary where an old buddy (the terrific character actor, Walter Burke) tells him she is going to Monterey. He gets on the train with her. When train travel was classy. Nice wood, an automat for food and a small juke box at every table. I remember that in diners once upon a time. I wonder if they still have them. On the train he shifts from just watching her to talking to her to being concerned about her to falling in love with her. They try and nab her and he intervenes - she isn't pleased - tells him to kill her now - maybe he should have. This has noir giving its best to break through to the surface but it has a script that repels every advance.