1977 Directed by Robert Benton
Over-the-hill gumshoe in Los Angeles seeks to avenge the killing of an old pal, another detective who had gotten himself involved in a case concerning a murdered broad, stolen stamps, a nickel-plated handgun, a cheating dolly, and a kidnapped pussycat.
This is like The Long Goodbye's scrappy, slightly dopey younger cousin who's not into as many cool bands and who sometimes seems a little desperate to entertain but you like him anyway because in conversation you realize he's actually kind of smart in his own unpretentious way.
Art Carney plays a semi-retired private investigator who partners with Lily Tomlin to catch and revenge the people that murdered his partner. Carney makes a great private eye....I could easily picture Bogart in this role. If Bogart would have lived longer....I am sure he would have played an aging past his prime detective. The younger Ira Wells (Carney's character) would have used his brawn to get out of the messes he finds himself in...the older Wells has to use his brains as he can not be the physical stuff anymore.
I have never been a Lilly Tomlin fan....and this movie did not change this opinion. To me her part slows the movie down....and I am not even sure why she…
Alongside Long Goodbye, Hickey & Boggs, and Night Moves, another "what if a hardboiled gumshoe but in the 70s" exercise. Also like those movies: totally great. It's not as hopeless as the latter two and unlike Long Goodbye, the protagonist (Art Carney) isn't just old-fashioned, he's also just plain old, as everyone he encounters is quick to point out. "You're late. About forty years too late," an electronics and menswear pushing fence tells him. Lily Tomlin plays a flaky new age pot dealer (well, only until she gets enough money to open a boutique dress store), rambling on about karma, she elicits a wonderful, "What the hell is she talking about?" from Carney.
I've always loved Tomlin, but this may be…
Art Carney is Ira Wells, an old-time private eye, stuck being an old man in late 1970s LA. He's got a bum leg, a hearing aid, and instead of bourbon, he drinks Alka-Seltzer when he gets shook up. Lily Tomlin is Margo, a nutcase who's lost her cat.
The lost cat ties into the murder of Wells' friend Harry Regan, so he agrees to work for Margo to find the man who killed Harry. A complicated case follows, of course.
Not fast-paced and somewhat predictable with the noir tropes, but extremely well done. Director and screenwriter Robert Benton put together a beautiful homage to the 1940s-50s detective movies. The dialog is sharp, without being over-the-top. As to the acting, Art…
It's a very rare thing to discover a 70s Hollywood film that doesn't involve a young up-and-comer in a part of some size. They sort of epitomized the era, either in front of, or behind the camera.
The Late Show, written and directed by Robert Benton and produced by Robert Altman, is a neo-noir where an elderly private detective gets more than he bargained for when reluctantly taking on the case of Lily Tomlin's missing cat. He's got enough on his plate as is, with trying to solve the murder of his friend.
Art Carney, a name I actually know less as a face than I do in written form is splendid as the sickly PI, and Bill Macy nails…
I think we need a new 1970s crime film list - '1970s Crime Movies That Prominently Feature A Cat'.
I've watched so many crime films from this decade now that I'm mostly running out of what are widely believed to be the big hitters in this genre and decade, and I'm starting to work my way through what I hope will be some under-appreciated and just plain forgotten gems. Probably the last such example was the excellent Going In Style, a film that also featured a performance of the highest calibre by Art Carney.
Yet the stuff around about The Late Show isn't quite right to me. The poster here and its description is misleading. This isn't really a warm…
These movies sink or swim on their characters, and The Late Show gives us a couple of winners. Art Carney as the aging P.I. and Lily Tomlin as his goofy new client have a terrific off-beat chemistry right from the start. This film was a real pleasure.
Un vieux détective privé et une jeune femme new age s'associent pour mener une enquête. Hommage nostalgique aux films de privés des années 40.
"The nicest, warmest, funniest and most touching movie you'll ever see about blackmail, mystery and murder."
Robert Benton's film is an unqualified success in maintaining a contradictory tone and Lily Tomlin's manic monologuing is breathlessly funny, but this admiring riff on Ramoyond Chandler gumshoe narratives piles on so much plot (as these things are want to do) that it often puts the case before the already disjointed comedy of two co-leads with polar opposite energies and tempo.
Ugh I wish they made sequels. I could watch Tomlin and Carney in at least four more capers.
"Whoever that guy is, he's no snob about how he kills people."
Firmly in line with the shaggy private eye trappings of The Long Goodbye (and has Robert Altman billed as a producer), mixing murder, pot, cats and blackmail deliciously. It's also got a great shakedown sequence set inside an adult movie theater.
Lily Tomlin is the greatest.
It must have stunk in boarding rooms by old men in the seventies. Cigarette smoke, stale liquor, and Gold Bond powder permeating the olfactory senses. A '70s movie that's '70s paced with top-notch '70s character actors- and Lily Tomlin. A nice homage to detective stories and films noir that were 30 years in this film's past. Art Carney is still an underrated actor. Best thing in The Honeymooners and The Star Wars Holiday Special.
Altman produced, and you can feel him occasionally in the production, but has it's own flavor too. A bit flat at times in an over run gum-shoe style story, but Tomlin and Carney have some great moments and conveys the aging detective in a modern world pretty well.
Warning: do not binge watch film noirs, and by binging I mean half a dozen or so within a few months. Space them out more. I over-indulged this year, and it might be why I had so little patience for this breezier, generally well-liked effort by Robert Benton, that otherwise belongs to the shambling '70s sub-category of the genre. Like all the ones from that decade, this one essays an over-the-hill Marlowe-type, and there's a melancholic sigh of defeat permeating the whole thing (though it's intentionally nowhere near as bleak as its era's counterparts), but I just couldn't bring myself to give a damn about the particulars - how aging detective Art Carney and kooky client Lily Tomlin get mixed…
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The film noir genre generally refers to mystery and crime dramas produced from the early 1940s to the late 1950s.…
