A_Different_Drummer The 70s. You had to be there.The cheap production standards of the 50s were an attempt to mass produce films the way you would would mass produce shoes. The 60s was an experimental era the same way the children of the 60s were experimenting with everything they could get their hands on.By the 70s films had become more contemplative. The folks behind this little gem decided it was time somebody wrote a script that captured the very essence of the film noires from the 40s.Notice I emphasized the script first, because the rest seems almost an afterthought. Make no mistake. Finney is brilliant as the protagonist comic who wants to be a shamus, a gumshoe, but without that magical script there would be no movie.The script is brilliant. You could turn the picture off and simply listen to the soundtrack and not miss much. ITS THAT GOOD.One scene in particular where Eddie has to seduce an office girl to get an address seems a riff off Bogey in BIG SLEEP. But with better and faster dialog.The fact that even the IMDb tag for the film says "comedy" -- WHICH IT WAS NOT -- tells you how lost this gem is in the annals of film.Whitelaw is great. Janice Rule steals her few scenes.Recommended.

Richard Burin Gumshoe (Stephen Frears, 1971) - or Scouser on the Third Floor, as I shall insist on calling it - is a skilled pastiche of classic film noir, with Albert Finney as a bingo caller and part-time comedian who fancies himself as a private eye. In his first day as a self-styled Sam Spade, he receives a mysterious phone call, plunging him into a superbly-realised world fusing the mundanity of Liverpool life with the Chandler-esquire yarn going on inside Finney's head. It's deftly done, with a ready wit and the deep knowledge of crime flicks (and the odd Western) essential to such genre explorations, while the script fairly drips with zingers. The narrative seems to house elements of Chinatown, Charley Varrick, The Cheap Detective, Hammett and Brick, but this was released before a single one of them. Another similar work, Play, It Again Sam, had played on Broadway but would not reach the screen for another two years.Finney is faultless in the lead, delivering his hard-boiled patter in a sliding hybrid of Bogart and Scouse, and keeping us guessing as to just how far gone his character is. The supporting cast includes Porridge favourite Fulton Mackay, making an ideal heavy as the Scottish hood on Finney's trail, Frank Finlay as our hero's menacing brother and Samuel Beckett alumnus Billie Whitelaw, playing a morally ambiguous woman caught between the siblings and sporting a hairstyle that would be impressively '80s were it not so resolutely '70s. Also cropping up in bit parts are Maureen Lipman as our bookshop floozy and Wendy Richards, speaking nineteen-to-the-dozen in a way that's very hard to decipher. Andrew Lloyd Webber's score - containing a rock 'n' roll parody written with Tim Rice - is also good fun, and if the eventual uncovering of the film's central conspiracy is a touch too small-scale to pack the requisite punch, that's a minor price to pay for 80 minutes of tense, superbly-scripted British noir.

simon-118 Stephen Frears was the ideal choice to direct this quirky little gem. His first film before a prestigious career in television and then in Hollywood shows off his sensitivity, compassion and efficency as a film maker beautifully. Albert Finney gives an astounding performance as our hero, Eddie Ginley, whose life on the surface is far from glamorous. An unemployed Liverpudlian who gets by as a bingo caller and wannabe comic, he is loved by everyone except his repulsive brother William (Frank Finlay) and has recently had to suffer his girlfriend (Billie Whitelaw) leaving him and marrying the sinister William. Eddie however has a boyish love for film noir, the stories of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, and the music of Elvis. When he decides to advertise his services as a private detective, he finds himself up to his neck in murder, drug dealing and South African politics! Finney manages both a weathered Scouse accent and a remarkable impression of Bogart incredibly. He is a lovable character, excellently written and played, who could have sustained a whole series of films. Billie Whitelaw is the Lauren Bacall style femme fatale, and the outsanding Janice Rule the seductive villainess. A fine array of British character actors like Bill Dean, Fulton Mackay and George Innes sprinkle the whole film with colour and eccentricity. The in-jokes for fans of Bogart films are spot-on but anyone can enjoy this film, with some superb one liners and very touching moments. But the whole film is stolen fair and square by the soundtrack, courtesy of Andrew Lloyd Webber of all people! From fifties style rockers, to pensive strings to huge, grandiose thirties style epic themes, the score is a delight. The finest moment is suely Eddie's outwitting of the irreplaceable Fulton MacKay on a tube train. Writer Neville Smith (who plays a small role) showed a less humourous approach to a loner's hero worship of his idols in his 1979 tv play Long Distance Information, in which he played the lead character, Christian, an Elvis obsessed DJ who is working on the night of the King's death. Gumshoe is not really a comedy though, but a pastiche, affectionate and observant. It does have it's dark moments though, including a heroin suicide and a couple of moments of violence. And like any good Raymond Chandler, the plot is unbelievably complicated and the least important element!

aromatic-2 An excellent cast does its utmost, but the results can be characterized as uneven at best. This movie had many clever ideas, and should have saved half of them for another film. It also alternates uncomfortable between laughing at its characters and laughing with them. Still, there are several brilliant scenes that will reward those with the tenacity to stick with it, especially in the film's last third. My rating -- 6/10.