THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (Dir. Stuart Rosenberg, 1973, US)

February 21, 2024

THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (Dir. Stuart Rosenberg, 1973, US)

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When a gunman opens fire on a late-night bus in San Francisco, establishing the idea of a killer on the loose in a city one would naturally assume this is going to be the first of many brutal public executions. I blame Siegel’s Dirty Harry (1971), which was released a few years, for conditioning the consciousness of film audiences into expecting a serial killer chomping his way through the urban scenery. Stuart Rosenberg doesn’t take the bait, rejecting what would have been the delirium of the obsessive police detective and the violence of the killer. Instead, Rosenberg seems far more interested in the unexciting inner lives of the police detectives. The narrative carves out a fairly complex character study of Jake Martin (Walter Matthau), a middle-aged detective, jaded yet consumed by the grim realities of police work while completely disinterested in a home life made up of a family in which his wife behaves like an automaton and a son who visits porno theatres.

A lean Eastwood traipsing around the streets of Frisco is of course an elegant sight to behold but Rosenberg turns this notion on its head, casting the droopy Matthau in the lead and confounding expectations. What Matthau brings is a comedic flair that cuts through the urban gutter, and which is doubly amplified in the casting of Bruce Dern as his makeshift partner; a double act that stumbles their way through the pursuit of the gunman. When the identity of the gunman is unveiled, Rosenberg avoids the spectacular, suggesting the work of a detective is convoluted, non-linear, boring and completely topsy turvy, the antithesis of Eastwood’s politicized specimen of a modern-day cop. If McQueen’s Frank Bullitt (1968) brought an urban non-conformist chic to the police detective, then Matthau’s Jake Martin appears to be almost out of step with what was a changing American society, a sort of relic but likable nonetheless.

1970s, Crime, Neo noir

Posted by:

Omar Ahmed

2 responses to “THE LAUGHING POLICEMAN (Dir. Stuart Rosenberg, 1973, US)”

Roy Stafford

February 23, 2024 at 11:34 am

Hi Omar! I’m delighted that you found this. I’ve been trying to watch it for years. I’m particularly interested because of my work on the Martin Beck novels written by Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall in Sweden during the late sixties and early 1970s. There were ten books in all, working like a modern box-set. The Laughing Policeman is ‘loosely’ adapted from book 4 published in 1968. What intrigues me is that the casting of Mattthau as the Beck character pre-dates the casting of the Swedish comic actor/comedian Carl-Gustaf Lindstedt in the 1976 Swedish film based on Book 7 which had the English language title, The Man on the Roof. It was Lindstedt’s first film and he looked a little like Matthau (i.e. not conventionally handsome). I wonder if Bo Widerberg, the Swedish director of The Man on the Roof had seen the Rosenberg film? Also, you make the contrast with Clint Eastwood and when I introduced The Man on the Roof at HOME a few years ago, I made the same comparison. Unfortunately my understanding is that the Hollywood film removed most of the political comment from the Beck book.

It’s good too that you have reviewed a Rosenberg picture. I always liked his film but his left/liberal leaning films often did poorly in America. Have you seen W.U.S.A. (1970) with Paul Newman – a film about a right-wing populist radio station in New Orleans?

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1. Omar Ahmed
  
  February 23, 2024 at 5:35 pm
  
  Hi Roy. Thanks for your vital context to the source material for the film. I hadn’t realised there was a Scandinavian connection but makes for a fascinating cross cultural connection. In fact, since you make that connection, it does make sense why the film doesn’t really follow many of the conventions or expectations of what audiences probably wanted at the time. Interesting point regarding erasure of political content, which is unusual given how political Rosenberg was in many of his films. I’ve seen many of Rosenberg’s films, and he certainly deserves a retrospective – very underrated IMO, and you are spot on re his left/liberal leanings. I did post something on Brubaker, another Rosenberg film, a while back, and one of his more popular works.
  
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