OVP: Absence of Malice (1981)

Film: Absence of Malice (1981)

Stars: Paul Newman, Sally Field, Bob Balaban, Melinda Dillon, Wilford Brimley

Director: Sydney Pollack

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Actor-Paul Newman, Supporting Actress-Melinda Dillon, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Sally Field: click here to learn more about Ms. Field (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

During the early 1980's, Sally Field became what she'd clearly always dreamed of becoming: a serious actress.  We talked last week about Norma Rae, the movie that launched her onto this platform, and won her her first Oscar, against actresses like Jane Fonda & Jill Clayburgh who were taken more seriously than the former Flying Nun.  Field kept the pedal-to-the-medal on trying to change her image in the coming years, appearing in commercial fare (Hooper, Smokey and the Bandit II), movies that upended her cutesy image like the hard-swearing Black Roads with Tommy Lee Jones, and more dramatic roles.  She would win a second Academy Award for her work in Places in the Heart in 1984, when she'd infamously utter the lines "right now...you like me!"...lines that would come to haunt her & in many ways underline the spunky actress she was trying to shed.  During this time, one of the dramatic films that she made was Absence of Malice, a serious film starring one of the biggest names of the era, and a guy who (unlike Field) was still in the hunt for his first Oscar: Paul Newman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows newspaper reporter Megan Carter (Field), who is given a tip from Rosen (Balaban), who works in the US Attorney's office that they are investigating liquor wholesaler Michael Gallagher (Newman) for the disappearance of labor leader Joey Diaz (never seen, but if you can't tell they're making him seem like a Jimmy Hoffa-type figure during this time frame, you need to study your history more).  Carter publishes this based on a file on Rosen's desk, which was clearly planted for her to publish, but it upends Gallagher's life.  They don't actually have any evidence of the connection, but with the paper now saying "he's connected," he can't get out of it.  Gallagher is the son of a former crime boss, but is generally living a clean life...until Carter forces him to act dirty.  This comes to a head when Teresa Perrone (Dillon) provides an alibi for him-that he was taking her to a doctor to have an abortion.  But Perrone is devoutly Catholic, and when Carter's bosses insist they have to publish her name & that she had an abortion, Perrone kills herself.  This sets off a chain-of-events where Gallagher shows he learned something from his father, using a romantic relationship with Carter and implicit bribery of a US Attorney to get off...and to get their careers fried in the process.

Absence of Malice sounds better than it actually is when I describe it above.  It reads like an ambitious, greedy reporter wanting to make a name for herself, who sacrifices her soul and in the process has a man who had lived an honorable life go back to his criminal roots to punish her and those around her who destroyed the life of Teresa, the only truly innocent person in the picture.  That's not what it is though.  The writers desperately want us to care about the romantic relationship between Field & Newman, but you don't...because you realize that Megan is not a good person, even if she's played as bubbly & sweet in Field's hands.  The film could've ended on Megan admitting she was involved with Gallagher but knew nothing about him, but instead ends on a conversation between the two, potentially setting up a reconciliation.  But why?  They should hate each other, particularly him hate her...what's there, given so much of what came before was fake?

This hurts the performances.  Field is badly miscast here .  Field was in that "I can do anything" part of her career in 1981, but she is not right for this-you need an actress who can play fragile-but-brittle, and she is not a brittle performer (you kind of think someone like Susan Sarandon might've been better off with this part).  Newman is better, but again-this is a great character until the writers come in the way (you see hints of what might've been decades later when Newman would play a similar character in Road to Perdition), and you feel like you only get half a performance.  Melinda Dillon got her second-and-final Oscar nomination for her work here, and she does create a shadow over the film (her confession scene, where she tries to convince Megan not to publish that she had an abortion, knowing that she'll end up killing herself if she does but not having the guts to say it, is really well-done); again, though, much of the work in the back-half of the film takes air out of her performance by cheapening it.  Wilford Brimley, honestly, is pretty good in his one extended scene, giving the film some life, but at that point, it's too late-the script has already wrecked the promising premise.