Post by Eddie Love on Aug 20, 2011 9:15:51 GMT -5
Though he amassed a long and varied filmography, Blake Edwards is today known principally for his comedies. For a while though, he was more of an all around picture-maker who varied output like his Peter Sellers vehicles with more dramatic fare. One of the last of these titles before turning his attention exclusively to comedies was 1972’s THE CAREY TREATMENT, an unheralded medical thriller that’s a crisply efficient delight and a film I’m now tempted to rank as featuring Edwards’ best directorial work.
Based on an early Michael Crichton novel (penned and here adapted under two separate pseudonyms) the story concerns Peter Carey played by James Coburn. Once a surgeon, Carey’s now a chain-smoking pathologist (?) who’s relocated to Boston from the left coast. His new gig is at an old-guard, straight-laced Beantown institution run by a rigid Brahmin dynasty. But when a med school buddy is busted for a botched abortion the cops are calling murder, Carey starts to stir up trouble in his search for the truth.
Yes, I’m on record as not being much of a fan of the Flint films, and part of that reason is I think James Coburn is one of those actors who need some meat on the bones of a role for him to be really effective. He’s not a guy like Paul Newman or Robert Mitchum or Bruce Willis who audiences (or at least me) immediately sympathize with and will follow into any situation. For me, he’s more of a character actor than a movie star and he works best when we’re not asked to relate to him too much.
That said THE CAREY TREATMENT finds a comfortable middle ground for the star. Peter Carey is brash and arrogant. (And a little tragically hip as he calls guys “man” and women “baby”.) And as his investigation progresses and wears on him, we see him do ever more nasty things to get to the answers. (In the climax, there’s a great bit where the officious Boston cop (Pat Hingle) who’s been busting his ‘nads the whole picture, exhibits more sympathy for a troubled suspect than by now almost obsessed Carey does.) In moments like this Coburn easily conveys the notion that this doctor’s search for the truth emanates from some innate sense of entitlement or intellectual superiority. But there's also a scene where he braces what, I guess, is a stuffy, gay character for answers where the actor hits the perfect note of impassioned reason.
However, Coburn’s also charming throughout the picture, maybe not always relatable, but engaging and damned entertaining. Watching this, I came away with a renewed respect for him. He was a star who really did his own thing.
If you watched this film without knowing who made it, I doubt the name Blake Edwards would appear in the list of the 25 likeliest candidates of who could have. It’s shot in a gritty, evocative and moody 70s look and it’s marvelously lean in the editing. At times you think this could be Arthur Penn or Sydney Lumet, but Edwards is more playful in the composition of the shots, never in a studied way, but in the manner that the characters enter in and out of the foreground and the figures are wittily framed.
And there is a great sense of the Boston locations as Carey moves from manicured estates to seedy lowlife hangouts. The naturalistic supporting cast perfectly relates the tense atmosphere of a town stifling their dirty secrets. And the mystery as it plays out is unpredictable and has Ross MacDonald style real-world believability. This isn't a cozy whodunit. The stakes are real.
Also the milieu of the doctors’ world is neatly portrayed. When the characters talk about issues relating to women’s reproductive health it’s incisive, but not soapboxy. And if the laws cited are arcane, nothing in these scenes comes off sounding dated in how the underlying subjects are discussed. The attitudes are thoughtful, even provocative, without tipping the movie into Stanly Kramer “message movie” territory. And for all the cant about liberal Hollywood, this is the only film I can think of where characters have adult discussions about the ethics and legality of abortion. And this was 1972!
If the film has a downside, it’s that the final 20 minutes or so take us into a more standard thriller climax and the smarts that informed the earlier scenes seem to be placed on hold. If only Edwards had brought the same ground-breaking chills he evidenced in EXPERIMENT IN TERROR to these later passages the whole picture would ft together better.
Also, throughout the movie Carey romances the hospital’s nutritionist played by Jennifer O’Neill, and these scenes might distract some from the mystery’s spine. The tone is a bit gauzier than the down and dirty realism of the rest of the picture. I didn’t mind them myself, and while the former model may not be the greatest actress, she’s vivacious and completely gorgeous.
I think if this movie had been more somber, less playful, more overtly serious in it’s outlook and had starred less of a glossy “Hollywood leading man” it would be regarded as a prime bit of nervy 70s cinema. Instead, I think it was regarded as your standard mainstream output, and it’s better than that, in fact as it’s an almost perfect little movie.
Alas, after the following year’s spy romance THE TAMANRAND SEED, Edwards would be pretty exclusively in the Clouseau game for the next decade. (Whether series star Sellers was alive or not.)
