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THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE: Shyster Lawyers In Neo-Noir
by Michael Asimow
The Coen Brothers have done
it again! The Man Who Wasn't There delivers a loving parody
in stunning black-and-white of noir favorites like Double
Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice. It is
superb. Hilarious. A knockout.
Billy Bob Thornton, at his
stone-faced best, plays Ed Crane, a small town barber of few
words but many cigarettes. The always exquisite Frances McDormand
is his wife Doris who, it seems, has been straying with her boss
Big Dave (James Gandolfini) over at Nirdlinger's Department Store.
Now if only Ed could find a way to raise $10,000 to invest in
the radical new idea of dry cleaning. . .
 The
story then meanders pleasurably through antic subplots, not to
mention blackmail and various murders, suicides and other mayhem,
with the wrong people getting accused of all the wrong crimes.
Anyone who reveals the plot should be sent to the chair, so I'll
refrain from disclosing any more of it.
Instead, let's turn to my personal
favorite character in the film: the deliciously sleazeball lawyer
Freddie Reidenschneider, said to be the best criminal lawyer
in California, who winds up defending both Doris and Ed. Tony
Shalhoub is picture-perfect in the role of Freddie. Freddie is
such a world-class BS artist. He employs the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle to illustrate that we can never know whether a fact
is true since we will always change it by observing it. Indeed,
Ed reports, Freddie told the jury "to look not at the facts,
but at the meaning of the facts. Then he said the facts had no
meaning." Also, Freddie lives by the motto "I litigate.
I don't capitulate."
Knowing full well that his
clients can't afford his services, Freddie tanks up on immense
meals at the local eatery at their expense. He unabashedly instructs
his clients what lies to tell. And, of course, he dumps them
when the money runs out. He is replaced by the thunderously inept
public defender Lloyd Garroway who pleads his murder client "guilty
with explanation."
Freddie is in the grand tradition
of movie shysters, and we law and pop culture mavens could reel
off quite a few. Freddie reminded me particularly of the affable
gonif Willie Gingrich (Walter Matthau) in The Fortune Cookie
(1966) who enthusiastically cooks up a totally phony personal
injury case and terrifies the suave insurance lawyers on the
other side. Then there's the surpassingly inept Dennis Denuto
in The Castle (1997) who
relied on "the vibes" from Australia's famous Mabo
case.
But my absolute favorite movie
shyster is the immortal Billy Flynn (Adolpe Menjou), the criminal
defense lawyer in Roxie Hart
(1942). This film was the basis for the fabulous Kander and Ebb
musical Chicago. (Billy's the one in Chicago who describes his
courtroom technique in the lyrics "Show them a little razzle
dazzle, razzle dazzle 'em. . .) Billy defends only women who
have killed their husbands or boyfriends and, of course, Chicago
juries always acquit these lovely ladies. As in The Man Who
Wasn't There or The Fortune Cookie, Flynn sees his
job as concocting some wholly fictitious story for his murderous
client and then selling this nonsense to the newspapers and to
the jury.
Well, the lovable shyster Freddy
is only one of the numerous attractions of The Man Who Wasn't
There, a picture that fans of noir and of law movies simply
can't miss.
Posted December 10, 2001
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