In short: Silver Bears (1977)

Ivan Passer’s caper comedy has one of the more convoluted plots I’ve encountered; not difficult to understand while watching the film, mind you, just absurdly complicated to explain. Given that it concerns an attempt by the Mafia to buy a Swiss bank for money laundering purposes as thought up by a bright Brit (Michael Caine), that needs an Italian Prince (Louis Jourdan in a genuinely good performance, which is not something I say lightly or often about the man) to work, and will eventually involve an attempt to break the world’s silver monopoly with silver provided by a pair of Moroccan ex-nobility (Stéphane Audran and David Warner), as well as a romance sub-plot with Cybill Shepherd in one of the least convincing attempts to make a beautiful woman look frumpy, this should be rather a good time.

Yet it isn’t. Worse, the film doesn’t work for reasons that are really hard to explain. Especially when you keep in mind that not one of the actors puts in a bad or lazy performance (one might argue about Shepherd here, but she simply appears to try and have fun with a not terribly interesting role, and is at the very least charming as hell in the role), and that the script contains about one funny or clever idea a minute. Passer’s direction certainly isn’t offensive either. It does lack a certain degree of spark that would probably be helpful to the movie, but the director paces scenes well, and generally gets out of the way of his cast.

Still, there’s a curious lack of impact to everything in Silver Bears: jokes, the decidedly pretty locations, the plot, the perfectly good performances are all there. Yet somehow, they manage to leave little impression, at least on this viewer.

Three Films Make A Post: He's Six Feet Six Inches of Dynamite. She's Crazy. Absolutely Crazy.

La Funeraria aka The Funeral Home aka The Undertaker’s Home (2020): Mauro Iván Ojeda’s Argentinean horror film is about a mortuary business that’s haunted by ghosts the undertaker and his family just have to arrange themselves with as parts of their normal life, until they can’t anymore. It is an interesting mixture of Weird family drama, with relatively typical horror movie beats but also a handful of genuinely original ideas about the nature of life, death and love; a film that takes some very un-generic decisions on what to show and what not to; and a bleak film whose friendlier elements in the climax make it feel even bleaker.

La Tulipe noire aka The Black Tulip (1964): Based on Dumas in title only, Christian-Jaque’s French Revolution-set swashbuckler with Alain Delon playing two very different brothers manages to be a fun blast of a film as befits an entry into its genre on-screen, but also has undertones of surprising bleakness (one can argue, also perfectly in keeping with the genre as it should be) that seem to mirror the nature of its main characters, as well as that of the French Revolution itself. Of course, the old order as represented by the sadistic clowns ruling over the part of the French countryside the film takes place in is the main enemy here, and the film knows what its genre is for and what not too well to be too critical of the Revolution. But thanks to the bitter and cynical of the two twins, there’s also the shade of the bitter and cynical turn the revolution itself would take visible.

Special Delivery (1976): In this film by the often great Paul Wendkos, the plot about a war vet robber’s (Bo Svenson) attempt to get at the loot he had to deposit in a mailbox while on the run from the police, encountering a young divorcee looking for herself (Cybill Shepherd) and finding quite a talent for crime and love, really isn’t the point of the film. Instead, Wendkos uses the single street in LA and a couple of places outside of it to create a microcosm of the nightly side of the city and the encounters our leads have in it, with characters like the would-be motorcycle gang of rapist thugs of a young Jeff Goldblum(!), the local crime boss (Robert Ito), and so on and so forth. It’s rather a lot like a road movie that takes place in only one stop on the way.

Apart from Wendkos direction that makes a lot out of people watching other people from unexpected angles, the film also recommends itself by the great actors. Svenson – not always a favourite of mine – turns a character personable and interesting who could be a simple thug, and Shepherd creates a woman who is at once driven by doubt and insecurity and capable, courageous and determined, while also being charming as hell.