Flashback, 1981: 'Absence of Malice'

This post is the second in my "Flashback 1981" series: viewings and responses to films released as close to thirty years ago as possible. The first, on Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City, was posted on this blog in late August.

Why 1981, one might ask? Two reasons, both of them mostly arbitrary. The first is that I have often neglected films of the 1980s and early 1990s much more than any other historical era—while I've enthusiastically explored silent film, classics of the early sound era to the mid-twentieth century, and developing New Waves and changes in international cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, I for some reason have been mostly uninterested in films of the 80s and 90s, until now. Secondly, I was born in 1984 and did not really start paying attention to movies as a social art form until the late 1990s, so I feel like it will be interesting to further explore and chart the changing cultural climate of the era into which I was born. 

Absence of Malice   116m., R, USA

Release Date   November 19, 1981

Distributors   Columbia Pictures

Director   Sydney Pollack

Writer   Kurt Luedtke (uncredited: David Rayfiel)

Producers   Sydney Pollack & Ronald L. Schwary

Music   Dave Grusin

Cinematography   Owen Roizman

Editor   Sheldon Kahn

Production Design   Terence Marsh

Cast   Paul Newman, Sally Field, Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Luther Adler,  Barry Primus, Josef Sommer, John Harkins, Don Hood, Wilford Brimley, Arnie Ross, Anne Marie Napoles, Shelley Spurlock

Originally, I had intended to post an entry in this "Flashback 1981" series about twice a month, hoping that by keeping tabs on successive releases in late 1981 I could get a very general sense of filmmaking trends and styles of the time. There were a few films I was especially looking forward to watching or revisiting: the Walter Hill actioner Southern Comfort (scored by Ry Cooder), released on September 21, 1981; My Dinner with Andre (October 11), which I saw about ten years ago and, I would expect, might appreciate a little more fully this time around; Shock Treatment (October 31), the semi-sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which might have made a fine, excessively-80s addition to my hungover Halloween weekend movie marathon; and Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (November 6), which hardly needs an excuse to be rewatched.

I'll be honest: much of the reason I didn't rewatch or write about any of these movies was a hefty work schedule, and the fact that there were plenty of new releases in theaters that I decided to catch up on instead. But another reason is that a surprising number of movies from the early 1980s—even those which might be considered classics, or at least fondly-remembered—are surprisingly difficult to find on DVD. I could only find Southern Comfort, for example, in a shoddy version posted on YouTube, and The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I assumed would be one of those overly stately "literary" movies available on a bare-bones "Special Edition" reissue DVD, was nowhere to be found. This makes me wonder if early-80s movies occupy a no-man's-land of past releases that have been given the cold shoulder by studios when deciding which of their holdings to reissue (though I suppose this is true of past releases from any period—it only makes sense that studios would give their attention to titles that have the greatest name recognition).

In any case, it's somewhat fitting that my second post in this Flashback series addresses Sydney Pollack's Absence of Malice, as it would make a nifty double-feature with Sidney Lumet's Prince of the City. Both movies are about rampant corruption and the almost-inevitable loss of honor and morality in modern social institutions. Prince of the City's undercover narcotics officer is torn apart by guilt and self-loathing after he starts turning evidence over to an Internal Affairs investigation—he feels like he's betrayed his coworkers and friends and, what's worse, violated the unwritten code of honor among lawmen. Meanwhile, Absence of Malice's Megan (Sally Field), a journalist who begins investigating a liquor distributor for possible ties to the mob, compromises her integrity and destroys the lives of those around her with sensational stories that value tawdry gossip over the truth. Both movies even feature Bob Balaban in practically the exact same role: a weaselly government agent who, in his dogged efforts to advance his own career, cares little about what actually happens to the people he exploits.    

Between the two movies, Prince of the City is unquestionably leagues beyond Absence of Malice. Lumet's film is an epic, troubling account of how law, big business, the drug trade, and the federal government intersect in ways more symbiotic than antagonistic, ultimately shattering the lives of more than a few people. Its atmosphere of greed and self-compromise seemed particularly attuned to the economic state of the U.S. in the early 1980s, when urban drug trafficking was escalating at an alarming pace and Ronald Reagan's corporate-friendly government made the lower and upper classes drastically stratified. Absence of Malice, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to consider the specific sociopolitical climate of its story; it's a general (even cliched) take on the old journalistic cautionary tale about writers valuing "the scoop" over the actual lives of the people involved. Although Paul Newman did admit in a 1983 interview that the film was a direct attack on the New York Post's sordid "Page Six" gossip column, similar subject matter had been tackled in Billy Wilder's 1950 film Ace in the Hole and is even more pertinent today. In other words, Absence of Malice could have taken place anywhere at any time; Megan's lack of journalistic integrity has more to do with her own ambition and her romantic relationships than with any kind of external pressure from a corrupt industry or government. (Not that this character-based approach is less valid than a sociopolitical one; in the context of Absence of Malice, though, it's certainly less interesting.)

What the movie has to say about journalism and letting your emotions distort your occupational duty is simple, trite, and uninteresting, but Absence of Malice does feature some performances that lend the film a tough, compassionate humanism, giving it a much greater sense of gravity than might be expected. Field handles the vulnerability of her character more ably than her steely resourcefulness (for a character who's supposed to be so singlemindedly ambitious, she seems remarkably passive a lot of the time), but it's nice to see her in a semi-serious dramatic role in what was arguably the prime of her career (two years after her Oscar nomination for Norma Rae). She's someone I've always wanted to see more of, and Absence of Malice is a nice indication of her unique onscreen presence. 

But the movie really belongs to Paul Newman and, in a significant supporting role, Melinda Dillon. Newman plays Michael Gallagher, the liquor distributor who, after he's slandered in Megan's article and unduly investigated by slimy federal prosecutors, plots his devious (and too-convoluted) revenge against the public institutions that vilified him. Absence of Malice is ultimately a revenge story posing as a morality play, but at least that revenge is given sophistication and quiet, burning anger by Newman. In what might be deemed the middle period of his career (after the youthful vigor of movies like Hud, yet before the twilight irascibility of, say, Nobody's Fool), Newman is still quietly heroic, world-weary and stoic but restraining untold feelings. His Gallagher is an iconic Hollywood prototype (the cynical, intense crusader who's always one step ahead of everyone else) in a movie that's supposed to reflect real life, but that's what makes him so interesting and appealing to watch; rather than him seeming out-of-place, it's as though the movie strives yet fails to reach the same level of energy and bravado that he displays. Gallagher is granted one emotional breakdown: a suitably unsettling scene in which he claws at Megan, hissing furiously at her until he literally throws her onto a dirty warehouse floor. It's a pivotal and impressive scene, mostly because it unleashes the pent-up hostility of his character and allows some uncomfortable cruelty to sneak into a movie that's otherwise pretty tame (even though it pretends not to be).

Melinda Dillon's character is a bit more simplistic: she's all saintliness and misplaced trust as the Catholic school-worker who's most tragically affected by Megan's dishonorable actions. It's no coincidence her character's name is Teresa. But the movie obviously needs to give a human face to the negative repercussions of Megan's slander, and that face is given sensitivity and a poignant sense of naivete by Dillon (another actress whose late '70s/early '80s work I need to catch up on). The best moment in the whole movie, in fact, is her resigned, matter-of-fact attempt to suppress a shocking revelation about her (printed in another of Megan's articles) by walking up and down her block and stealing all of the newspapers from her neighbors' front lawns.

Stylistically the movie is even less distinctive than Prince of the City; Lumet and Pollack both come from television backgrounds, which lent them both a concise, uncomplicated style that could be either powerfully compact or lifelessly dull. With Absence of Malice, Pollack is content primarily to point and shoot, although he has the good sense to evoke both the sun and squalor of the Miami setting, and to let the characters dominate the storytelling. If those characters sometimes seem a little one-note, not to mention in the service of disseminating overly trite moral lessons, then at least they are given occasionally-exciting life by at least three actors who were all working at the top of their game. 

NEXT: Warren Beatty's Reds (Dec. 4)