Goodnight, My Love

"Goodnight, My Love" appeared as a movie-of-the-week just a few years before neo-noir became a viable 1970s genre through films such as "Chinatown" and "Farewell, My Lovely." It's nowhere near as good as either of those, though. The 1940s L. A. atmosphere is more hinted at than evoked (never has the city looked so small), and stars Richard Boone and Michael Dunn, as rather seedy P. I.s, look more like they're dressed for a Halloween party than inhabit the characters. Boone in particular is miscast, looking both tarnished and afraid as he growls through his lines with the greatest ennui; James Garner would have been a far better choice for the role as written. Dunn tries hard, though his arbitrary perpetual hunger seems more like an homage to "Scooby-Doo" than a meaningful character trait. He and Boone have so little chemistry that one wonders how they became detective partners. Stealing the show are Victor Buono, who is aces as a Sydney Greenstreet-like criminal, and Barbara Bain, who plays the smoky, beautiful mystery woman who instigates the case to noir perfection. The plot has to do with a missing man, a missing large sum of money, and some murders, and Boone frequently complains that he has no idea what's going on. But the audience, if they're awake, should have little trouble figuring out exactly what is happening before it's revealed. Writer/director Peter Hyams' decision to shoot many scenes in one long shot, aided by obvious post-dubbing, might have been a stylistic choice, but it looks more like they ran out of time and money to do anything other than master shots. "Goodnight, My Love" (an evocatively parodic title that means nothing in context) isn't total loss, but it's hardly a win, either.

I saw this movie when it first aired back in 1972 on ABC movie of the week and I'm trying to get a copy of it as I write this. Just about everyone in the cast is dead except for Barbara Bain. I was hoping it was going to get picked up as a show but like so many good pilots from that time period it fell by the waste side. If you haven't seen it, try to check it out. It's a well above average detective TV movie With a great cast. Back in the 70's There was a lot of movies being made about that time period. Even Robert Mitchum Played a Philip Marlow in 1974 in Farewell My Lovely. Tony Curtis did Lepkie and so on. I think when Re-runs of the untouchables surfaced it started a wave on that subject matter. To bad there not making more films like that now.

We watch people boarding a bus, circa 1944/45/46. A man is seated in the back quietly, when a soldier sits down next to him. For what must represent at least an hour or two of traveling the soldier is just jabbering away, while the man next to him is...well trapped, hoping this clown will just move away, leave the bus, or shut up. Finally they are the last two on the bus when they reach a stop. The soldier says it's his stop, picks up his duffel bag, says good bye to the man, pulls out a gun with a silencer, and shoots him. He then pulls a large package out of the dead man's pocket, puts it into his duffel bag, and leaves the bus. And our movie of the week begins.

GOODNIGHT, MY LOVE was a valentine to the film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. Barbara Bain is the woman who goes to the private eye offices of Richard Boone. She is looking for her brother, who is missing. Soon it turns out this missing man is the "soldier" in the opening of the film. But the identity of the dead man is learned too - it is a courier carrying papers concerning the nightclub run by Vicor Buono. Boone's job is to find the missing man, but also to find out why the courier was hit. And there some people who appear not to want Boone to find any of this out.

But from the start the film is goofy. Boone's partner - one hesitates to call him his "Miles Archer" - is diminutive, but great actor Michael Dunn. Their firm is not doing so hot, which may explain Bain's hiring them. But soon Dunn's height shows it's usefulness. Somebody knocks at the firm's door, and Dunn goes to answer - and six bullets are pumped through the door's center (which would have killed a regular sized man answering, but happens to pass over a surprised Dunn's head). Unlike Bogart in MALTESE FALCON, Bain is no Mary Astor. In fact she remains consistently business-like regarding why she hired Boone (much to his dismay).

The obvious villain, of course, is Victor Buono as "Julius Limeway", a definite part in homage to the great Sidney Greenstreet. Buono is always seen at his nightclub, usually dining. He wears white tuxedos all the time. Dunn, getting fed up with Buono's sinister airs, lectures him before leaving that if he is going to wear white, he should not eat dishes with tomato sauce. Dunn and Boone leave the scene to Buono, last seen dipping his napkin into a water glass and rubbing his suit's lapel very heavily.

It was a different and welcome television movie, and one hopes it will show up again some time.

It's Los Angeles 1946, and a money courier for a shady nightclub owner is killed en route to his destination; meanwhile, a blonde "tomato" has hired beaten-down gumshoe Francis Hogan (and his "small fellow" sidekick) to find her boyfriend, who's been missing for four days. TV-made noir, an early effort from talented writer-director Peter Hyams, has everything a slim budget can afford: period costumes and cars, faux-Art Deco decor, seedy racetrack types and bookie joints. Unfortunately, Richard Boone, while amiable, isn't exactly Humphrey Bogart; looking out-of-place in tatty suits and hats, it's rather disconcerting to see Boone playing the good guy (with his molten lava complexion and steely eyes, he looks more like one of the gorillas hired on by the heavy). Victor Buono's performance as the piggy-eyed villain (who amusingly uses words like 'semi-literate') is the stand-out here, and Barbara Bain is also very good as the damsel-in-distress (she's likened to a Veronica Lake type, but she's much more from the Lauren Bacall school). Hyams' plot turns out to be a shaggy dog mystery--much of which takes place off-screen--and the character relationships suffer as a result. There's a little snooping, a little shooting, some scuffles, a few dead bodies, but nothing intrinsically exciting happening at the movie's core. Hyams obviously has a love for Bogie mysteries and Raymond Chandler stories (the title alone is pretty much a riff on "Farewell, My Lovely"), and his affection is translated here with aplomb. What he's missing is the sharp sting of a good story. Those '40s-era pulp-detective dramas worked on a much bigger scale than their visual accouterments and smart talk alone--they had cutting wit, a tangible mystery, and three-dimensional good guys and bad guys (you knew exactly where you stood with them). There's no time on the clock to expand on this reedy plot, and not enough money in the budget to expound on the virtues therein.

Back in the 1970s, some young directors really believed it was possible to make movies for television, rather than "TV movies" (one-episode 90 minute TV shows or the longer, even less cinematic soap opera 'miniseries'). The best known of these efforts was Spielberg's "Duel," but there were good films appearing now and again all the way up 'till about 1983, which saw the "Day After" phenomenon, following which Republicans put such pressure on TV producers, they never attempted anything risky on broadcast TV again.

This movie may very well be Peter Hyam's best. It certainly boasts the best later performance by Richard Boone as a washed-out detective and a knock-down performance by Michael Dunne as his side-kick. The camera-work, the pacing, the dialog, are all low-key, but need to be - this is an homage to the noir films of the forties, not a "Chinatown" attempt to resurrect them. Consequently there's a great deal of gentle humor here, but it never gets campy, and doesn't get in the way of a tight little mystery that is doomed to end badly for everyone - the detectives succeed in the end only because they live to be able to tell the tale (and are smart enough to know not to waste their breath telling it). There's a general feeling of 'life happens" pervading the film - as was also the case for the noir films toward the end of that genre as it faded after WWII. Despite the low-key approach, the film is highly memorable for its atmosphere and characterizations. I haven't seen it for years and I still think of seeing it with pleasure. Probably a lost film (although I suppose you can find anything on the internet), this could be well worth the research to rediscover.