The Laughing Policeman **** (1973, Walter Matthau, Bruce Dern, Louis Gossett Jr, Albert Paulsen, Anthony Zerbe) – Classic Movie Review 7,529

Rousing performances from Walter Matthau as an obsessed San Francisco police detective and Bruce Dern as his boorish, annoying new partner enliven Stuart Rosenberg’s energetic, exciting 1973 cop thriller The Laughing Policeman. 

Rousing performances from Walter Matthau as a dogged, fussy West Coast police detective and Bruce Dern as his thick, irritating new partner enliven producer-director Stuart Rosenberg’s busy, energetic, old-fashioned 1973 cop thriller The Laughing Policeman (aka An Investigation of Murder).

Based on an award-winning 1968 Swedish novel by Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, which was set in Stockholm, The Laughing Policeman is relocated to San Francisco, where a mad machine-gunner is on the loose, killing a late-night bus load of people, including a cop, Matthau’s previous partner, whose death Matthau is ordered to investigate with Dern by their boss, Police Lieutenant Nat Steiner (Anthony Zerbe).

Walter Matthau plays obsessed veteran San Francisco Police Detective Sergeant Jake Martin (Martin Beck in the novel) and Bruce Dern plays abrasive Police Inspector Leo Larsen (Gunvald Larsson in the novel). The two actors have a very good rapport. A pair of extraordinarily fine screen actors, they are central to the film’s success. Anthony Zerbe and Louis Gossett Jr as Inspector James Larrimore are also indispensable. Stuart Rosenberg’s direction is crucial too. He is very pacy, wired and attentive. The mystery plot may be far fetched and a shade unfathomable (OK dense and a little hard to follow), but the actors and director make it fully credible and compelling.

Tense, dour and exciting, The Laughing Policeman dangerously mixes wry laughs with casual non-PC attitudes and bursts of graphic Seventies-style violence as multiple people are shot with bloody bullet wounds in several scenes. Bruce Dern’s loose-cannon character is racist, sexist and homophobic, and violent, and Walter Matthau’s character is pretty much the same really, just a bit older and wiser, so it’s all a bit more reined in and toned down. But he’s a man obsessed with the manhunt, particularly as he didn’t get his man two years earlier, and is convinced the cases are connected.

Some of the R-rated violence seems gratuitous, there are racial slurs and bad racial attitudes, and its homophobic portrait of San Francisco’s gay community is not exactly very right on, either. And the villain turns out to be gay (sorry, ‘fruiter’). The Laughing Policeman seems to relish this idea, though Matthau has some dialogue to Dern to cover this. Is the film racist, sexist and homophobic, or is it that the characters are? The script may be liberal-minded and intending to attack the means and methods of the law enforcers, but Matthau and Dern are so charismatic we could be persuaded to go along with their characters’ bad attitudes. Jake Martin and Leo Larsen are no better than Dirty Harry, or Alf Garnett.

But the sharp, incisive screenplay by Thomas Rickman and the impressive performances of a fine cast contribute to make this adult movie hugely entertaining, despite its very rough, awkward edges. Also it benefits enormously from being filmed on real San Francisco locations, with the interior scenes filmed in the same locations, not in the studio. It is now a potent snapshot of its time. As a thriller, nothing quite tops the opening scenes of pursuit and mass murder shooting on a bus, but there are many other excellently staged and performed scenes along the way to the final climax, a chase through the streets of San Francisco and a confrontation aboard another bus.

Also in the cast are Lou Gossett Jr, Albert Paulsen, Anthony Zerbe, Cathy Lee Crosby, Joanna Cassidy, Val Avery, Mario Gallo, Shirley Ballard, William Hansen, Jonas Wolfe and Anthony Costello.

Matthau did not do them too often, but he fitted very nicely indeed into tough thrillers like this, The Taking of Pelham 123 and Charley Varrick.

The title is a mystery. In the novel, Beck is presented with a gramophone record of the song The Laughing Policeman by Charles Penrose. In the original screenplay, Martin was supposed to laugh at the end, but the idea was abandoned during shooting for the present abrupt ending.

The title was changed to An Investigation of Murder in the UK in case The Laughing Policeman gave out the wrong message, especially with Matthau being famed for comedy.

It is the second film based on a novel by Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall following the 1967 Swedish film Roseanna. and preceding the 1976 The Man on the Roof.

Anthony Zerbe as Lt Nat Steiner in The Laughing Policeman.

The Laughing Policeman is directed by Stuart Rosenberg, runs 112 minutes, is made and released by 20th Century Fox, is written by Thomas Rickman, based on the novel by Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall, is shot by David Walsh, is produced by Stuart Rosenberg, is scored by Charles Fox, and is designed by Charles D Hall.

The cast are Walter Matthau as Sergeant Jake Martin, Bruce Dern as Inspector Leo Larsen, Louis Gossett Jr as Inspector James Larrimore, Anthony Zerbe as Lieutenant Nat Steiner, Albert Paulsen as Henry Camerero, Val Avery as Inspector John Pappas, Paul Koslo as Duane Haygood, Cathy Lee Crosby as Kay Butler, Joanna Cassidy as Monica, Gregory Sierra as Ken Vickery, Mario Gallo, Shirley Ballard, William Hansen, Jonas Wolfe and Anthony Costello.

Dern recalled it was Walter Matthau’s idea to have him share top billing. Dern was most grateful for this but less so for his salary. Matthau was paid $350,000 while Bruce Dern got $35,000. He stated his performance was apparently 10 per cent of Matthau’s.

The Laughing Policeman, published in Sweden in 1968 as Den Skrattande Polisen and translated into English in 1970, is the fourth of ten novels featuring police detective Martin Beck. It won an Edgar Award for Best Novel in 1971.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 7,529

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