Wed 9 Feb 2022
A PI Movie Review: THE DROWNING POOL (1975).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[12] Comments
THE DROWNING POOL. Warner Brothers, 1975. Paul Newman (Lew Harper), Joanne Woodward, Tony Franciosa, Murray Hamilton, Gail Strickland, Melanie Griffith, Linda Haynes, Richard Jaeckel. Based on the novel by Ross Macdonald. Director: Stuart Rosenberg.
Well, for one thing, they changed to location from sunny, hot southern California to sultry, swampy Louisiana, that much I know. I’m not sure, but I think the facility where the title scene takes place fit in better in the book. It seemed to me that came from nowhere in the movie, but I’d have to watch the movie again to state that as a fact. I watched this movie when it first came out, and I thought I remembered it, but the only scene that came back to me was the one in the pool, with the water rising and rising and still rising, with Harper and his lady companion trying to keep their heads above water.
Harper is hired by a former girl friend, Iris Devereaux (Joanne Woodward), to find out who’s been blackmailing her about an affair she’s been having. It’s not her husband she’s worried about. It’s his mother who runs the estate where they live with an iron hand. When’s she found murdered, it’s the chauffeur who’s the immediate suspect. (He was also suspected of being the blackmailer.) A ruthless oil developer who wants the property is also involved.
For a while after seeing this movie for the first time, I keep seeing Paul Newman as Lew Archer as I read the books. He’s very good in the role, but as time went on, the mental image I had of him gradually faded away. Joanne Woodward has a nothing part and makes very little of it. It was Melanie Griffith as her teenage sexpot daughter who made a bigger impression on me this time around.
How much the story resembles the book I wish I could tell you, but I can’t. Considering it on its own, story-wise it doesn’t stack up all that much higher than many an episode of a PI show being shown on TV around the same time. It’s Paul Newman’s presence that makes it what is , though, and he’s quite good at it.

February 9th, 2022 at 3:27 am
I’m probably more fond of this flick than anyone within seven hundred miles from where I’m typing this feedback.
I can’t speak to the film’s faithful/faithless adaptation from the source novel but I’m a loyal fan of this movie.
I admit that when dissected and anatomized, it’s not all that intricate a mystery. The movements of the various scheming characters does feel like an episode of any dozen TV series. But for all that, I find it stylish and charming and my thoughts often return to it whenever I have fun-detective-movies in mind.
It’s a showcase for Newman, certainly; but there’s several levels to enjoy in this. Here is the same powerhouse that made “Harper” (1966, Jack Smight) such a hit, revisiting his role nine years later. Newman’s protagonist is the same charismatic, wise-cracking rebel. Sauntering now rather than swaggering.
He’s a little slower, a little older, a little heavier at this late date in the detective tradition. But this Harper is also wiser, kinder, gentler, and more human. Visiting the Big Easy to help out an old flame results in a rueful, wistful, butterscotch toddy of a film with a little brine and pepper on the tongue at the same time.
The two flicks (’66 & ’75) complement each other as a “two-fer”. Two different glimpses of the same big star, two different junctures in that star’s career; two different takes on the same fictional sleuth. Different, yet the same.
What else do you get besides Newman? Gauzy photography and mellow direction from Stuart Rosenberg, Newman’s frequent collaborator. You get a helping hand from Walter Hill on the screenplay.
You get to see Newman sparking off hotheaded antagonist Tony Franciosa –another old acquaintance revived. Who could forget these two rakes at odds with each other in ‘The Long Hot Summer’ from ’58? Franciosa even trots out his good-ole-Southern-boy drawl again. A real treat.
The rest of the cast is a gaggle of all our favorite players; everyone spooning out cornpone for all they’re worth. Murray Hamilton, the sniveling cretin from so many flicks. Wild-eyed Andy Robinson –everyone’s favorite maniac. Richard Jaeckel. Little Melanie Griffith in similar vein as she displayed in ‘Night Moves’ a year or two before.
But even one of the thugs in this flick is Paul Koslo and the wacko brunette from “Five Easy Pieces” pops up too.
Newman as Harper, shoulders them all aside with hilarious quips as they blunder into him on his lazy chase for “a missing address book” which eventually solves this caj’un caper.
The whole film is lazy, in a way. But we can be kind instead and call it, just-trying-to-keep-cool-on-a-hot-summer-day.
Honorable mention to composer Paul Williams’ theme song sprinkled throughout this romp. Not a fan of the Roberta Flack(?) song added to Joanne Woodward’s scenes; and the rest of the yarn is just stylized notes plucked from tinny piano strings, but the end credits scroll to a feel-good Dixieland version which gets me grinning every time.
February 9th, 2022 at 10:50 am
I love comments that are longer than the original post. This one’s no exception. Thanks, Lazy. I think you covered everything, and what’s more, I can’t find anything to disagree with!
February 9th, 2022 at 11:19 am
The Drowning Pool was a notable failure, commercially and critically.
February 9th, 2022 at 12:21 pm
Sometimes the critics are wrong. And every once in a while, I’m right!
February 9th, 2022 at 12:23 pm
The critics do not matter, only receipts count.
February 9th, 2022 at 12:24 pm
I agree about Newman, but he had already begun a downward box office spiral.
February 9th, 2022 at 1:05 pm
In terms of box office, Newman may have been losing his appeal, but perhaps with all the PI shows on TV as the time, audiences were not all that interested in seeing another one, and having to pay for it.
February 9th, 2022 at 5:02 pm
He was ebbing, yes. I don’t disagree. But one of Newman’s very next films was the c-o-l-o-s-s-a-l, “SLAPSHOT”. Some call it his career-best performance. A fan favorite which is still reverberating across Canada and America even today. And a little later was ‘The Verdict’.
I also have a sneaking admiration for “Fort Apache, the Bronx”. I liked the style of how that one was done, if nothing else.
February 9th, 2022 at 10:50 pm
Even though this was the second Macdonald Archer he had already broken from the Chandler style plot of MOVING TARGET, but without finding his own voice or interests yet. It’s Macdonald still struggling toward what would make him Chandler as rival.and not imitator.
Archer/Harper in HARPER is given quite a bit more of a character arc than here. This is already closer to the cipher Macdonald meant Archer to be leaving Newman without much more than attitude to work with, and what felt hip and cool in HARPER is tired here.
William Goldman’s screenplay is missing too. It’s hard for any actors to replace that.
It’s in no way bad, just not fresh, and frankly for me with the exception of the leads and Griffith, it felt too much like a made for television movie and not a feature.
Though it isn’t Archer/Harper or Macdonald TWILIGHT rounds out the trilogy of Newman private eye films.
February 9th, 2022 at 11:33 pm
David,
You’ve done it.
Twilight, which had significant possibilities to be both successful and involving, turned out to be worse in every way, duller and less inspired, other than The Drowning Pool. Well, it looked better at the picture book level.
February 10th, 2022 at 8:48 am
As much as I enjoy the Harper film from ’66, one scene jars me: Paul Newman doing a mid-air somersault through a sitting room to foil the gunshot fired at him by Robert Wagner.
March 3rd, 2022 at 9:00 pm
Agree with Lazy Georgenby. The material’s flat, but the execution engages—thanks, in particular, to a deft cast. Even the camera-work seemed perky. And that near-drowning in the asylum? Outlandish, but riveting.