Posted by Don Malcolm
on 10/1/2009, 12:13 pm
96.251.89.110 | Message modified by user Don Malcolm 10/2/2009, 12:50 pm
One of the most stylized and streamlined of the Diamond episodes I've recently had the pleasure of watching (thanks to the impossibly generous Gord Gates!).
The twist ending, the carny/funhouse images and the back alley slugfests pile on the noir accoutrements to a level of saturation that is as semi-parodic as it is impressive.
Diamond (David Janssen, honing his laconic nicotine wheeze for its later apotheosis in Harry O) has a client, a sguirrelly comic (Joey Bishop). As the story unravels in the almost-superfluous need for an actual plot, he's witnessed an accident for whom his former manager is responsible. The hush-up arrangement went south when his marriage went sour, creating a strange triangle of "life vs. death" entanglements. If one stops to actually piece the story together, it falls apart in your hands, but in the frenetically compressed world of TV noir, this is ultimately irrelevant.
What overwhelms all that is the verve that DP Carl Guthrie brings to the table in taking derivative set-ups and sequences and giving them a cumulative panache that keeps the viewer saturated with action, action, action. The bodies pile up with the kind of gusto that provides the requisite "red meat" quotient without crossing the line into gratuitous gore; and, as I remembered from my earlier exposure to the show, Diamond is the most battered private eye ever, in a very odd way the prototype for the kind of "high-concept self-battering" characters we've run across in the past decade (the Adam Sandler character in Punch-Drunk Love comes to mind here).
Diamond, of course, is "cool" (as befits TV, the definitive "cool" medium according to McLuhan, and hence perfect for such a concentrated dose of noir visuals). His anger, unlike characters now, is manifested in a facial tic and a slightly louder whisper.
The climactic scene is an hommage to Welles's Lady From Shanghai finale, a funhouse mirror sequence that's nicely paced and shows how good Janssen already was in terms of acting with his face. All of that keeps you from thinking about the plot holes and the threadbare twist ending, carrying one along in the giddy saturation of noir style.
Carole Mathews, lurking around the world of film noir in her earlier days (a number of striking bit parts in late 40s Paramount noirs) does some fine work here as Bishop's ex-wife. She has the "seen it all" attitude honed to perfection. (Art imitating life, perhaps??)
Only downside: just one cut to the gams of Sam, and not nearly enough thigh...
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