I saw Absence of Malice earlier this year for the first time. It’s a slowburner and feels timeworn. But Sydney Pollack was fresh in the brain after I caught him in Michael Clayton, chewing scenery magnificently, shark-like menace gulping down Clooney in every showdown. So I caught it on TCM. In the 1981 thriller Paul Newman and Sally Field star as a man done wrong by a newspaper and a reporter from said newspaper, respectively. Though set in Miami and based on a true story, any film starring Newman, whether rolling through the Old West or kicking back in the California Sunshine, is ostensibly a New York story. With his skeptical, rough hewn Lower East Side lilt—”Whaddyamean?!?”—Newman was astoundingly regional, ethnic even, but nothing less than universal at the same time. It’s a wondrous feat in every film. Most accent owners wind up character actors or stage doyens. Newman was a blue chip movie star. The eyes and the lithe frame are likely to thank. So New York is always the backdrop.
Though Newman was a devil in Hud, the kids still looked up to his disaffected country boy, seducing Patricia O’Neal and swaggering like a peacock. This lead critics to call Newman resolutely likeable. The wink, the grin, the eyes-bulging sincerity. But in Absence of Malice there is one terrifying scene that changes that for a moment. Newman’s Michael Gallagher, still grieving over his best friend’s suicide, corners Field in the loading dock where he works and loses himself. Growing bigger and bigger, meaner and meaner, he loses control. It goes like this:
Michael Colin Gallagher: You don’t wanna come in here. I’m warning you.
Megan Carter: Michael, if I could just talk to you…
Michael Colin Gallagher: Shut up! I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear any of it! What the hell are you doing here? Details? Is that what you want? They found her naked in a tub. She didn’t even want to make a mess! No water, just naked. Are you interested? You interested?
Megan Carter: Yes.
Michael Colin Gallagher: She picked up a newspaper, for Christ’s sake! And there it is, for everybody to see! She must have felt like …
[rips open her shirt]
Michael Colin Gallagher: - just raped!
Megan Carter: [screams] Stop! Michael!
Michael Colin Gallagher: She must have…
Megan Carter: Stop!
Michael Colin Gallagher: You know something? When you kill yourself, it’s a homicide, so they do an autopsy. They’ll get a knife. They start here. They’re gonna split her open. Up here they use shears. Shears, for Christ’s sake! Oh, goddamn you!
When Newman tears Field’s shirt it is probably one of the most threatening, terrifying things you’ll ever seen in a movie. Not because you fear for Field’s character, necessarily, or the score nudges you into terror, or the lighting is just so. It’s because Newman attacks. Newman never attacked. But in this movie he did, and still wound up the hero of the film. We forgive him his rage. He was that kind of actor.
The Hustler is perfect. Slap Shot is shockingly good. Cool Hand Luke is special. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid is undeniable. The Verdict might be my favorite film ever. Hell, I even like The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. But Absence of Malice is why Newman was the guy.
