Director: Robert Benton
Screenplay: Robert Benton & Richard Russo
DOP: Piotr Sobocinski
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Starring:
Paul Newman
Susan Sarandon
and Gene Hackman
with Stockard Channing
Reese Witherspoon
James Garner
and Giancarlo Esposito |
This week we would leave social realism behind us and escape into the fantasy world of the hard-bitten private investigator made popular by writers such as Raymond Chandler and performers such as Humphry Bogart.
"Twilight" is a film set squarely in the film noir genre, complete with darkness and shadows, murders, double-crosses, infidelities and the essential femme fatale! What is notable about this film is that the central character, Harry Ross, is played by 73 year old Paul Newman - he of the melting blue eyes and cool charm who wowed audiences of earlier decades in films such as "Cool Hand Luke" (1967) and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969).
Ross is an ex LA Police officer and semi-retired private investigator who lives rent free in the home of his best friend Jack Ames (Gene Hackman). Jack, having refused further treatment for cancer, has been given a maximum of 12 months to live. He asks Harry to do him one last favour and deliver a package to a mysterious woman - and that's when the trouble begins. Instead of the woman he is meant to meet Ross finds himself at the wrong end of a gun held by a dying man, and discovers documents that implicate Jack and his wife Catherine (Susan Sarandon) in the death supposedly by suicide of Catherine's first husband some 20 years earlier. Enter the police, and with them Ross's ex lover (Stockard Channing) and an old police buddy (James Garner). Despite his desire to protect both Jack and Catherine, Ross is determined to uncover the truth.
The dialogue is crisp and witty, as long as you don't mind a few jokes about prostate problems and impotence. With the exception of James Garner's Raymond Hope, the secondary roles are not as developed as they might be. However, Sarandon is great as the "deadly woman whom no man can resist and whose love every man wants. But it is Paul Newman's film, and he has lost none of his cool, self-deprecating charm, delivering a truly polished performance
The cinematography is suitably dark and suggestive and the music by Elmer Bernstein adds to the mood of the piece. "Twilight" is a film that, whilst not reaching the great heights of a "Chinatown", leaves you with the feeling that you have been given your money's worth. And it is great to see older performers show how it is done.
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