Private Eye Pastiche

By JAY COCKS

GUMSHOE

Directed by STEPHEN FREARS

Screenplay by NEVILLE SMITH

On the morning of his 31st birthday, Eddie Ginley visits his psychiatrist. "What do you want to do?" the doctor inquires. Eddie's answer is immediate: "I want to write The Maltese Falcon. I want to record Blue Suede Shoes. And I want to play Las Vegas."

Eddie (Albert Finney) hums a lot of '50s rock 'n' roll, and the closest he has got to Vegas is a workingman's club in Liverpool, where he works as a bingo caller and occasional stand-up comic, telling what might be called shaggy canary stories to the appreciative customers. As for The Maltese Falcon, Eddie isn't so much interested in writing it as living it.

He wears a splendidly shabby trench coat, dangles Lucky Strikes on the corner of a lip that he tries to keep permanently curled. He plays at talking tough ("A gun, a grand and a girl--that's the kind of world I move in") and cracking wise. Neville Smith adeptly furnishes Eddie with a line of second-rate patter that tries to be breezy and ends by being hollow and rather sad, much like Eddie's own nostalgic dreams of glory.

After placing a classified ad in which he makes himself out to be a second generation Sam Spade, Eddie--somewhat to his astonishment--gets a call for a job. He shows up at a local hotel, where he picks up a package from a fat man who resembles Falcon's Kasper Gutman (the Sidney Greenstreet character). Inside the package are a sizable bundle of money and a pistol. Eddie is plunged into a plot as intricate and confounding as The Big Sleep.

As homage and as pastiche, Gumshoe works excellently. Frears and Smith are obviously careful and affectionate connoisseurs of the genre. Indeed Frears, making his first film, seems much the most interesting directorial talent from Britain since John Boorman. Yet Eddie Ginley finally gets away from both men because they are as enamored of his dream as he is. His illusions ought to have been shattered at the end of the film. Instead, as Eddie rounds up his grubby lot of crooks, they are nurtured and reinforced.

The actors manage to play success fully both for parody and poignancy. Especially dexterous are Janice Rule as the requisite dragon lady and Frank Finlay and Billie Whitelaw as Eddie's brother and sister-in-law. Albert Finney shows again that he is an actor of infinite resource, charm and cunning. But the part does not really test him, does not force him to extend himself and take chances. For most actors it is quite enough to be good. From Finney one has a right to expect more. . Jay Cocks

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