Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is a weirdly un-famous movie which works on a couple of different levels. For the 8 year old boy in all of us, it’s typical Steve Martin; a silly comedy with lines like “Can I use her underwear to make soup?” For the film noir fan it’s a loving tribute to the genre, complete with fainting dames and frequent bullet wounds. Finally, for the movie buff it’s an unmissable pastiche of some of Hollywood’s best loved flicks.
Steve Martin plays Rigby Reardon, a private eye (what else?) who is haunted by the words “Cleaning woman” and calls up Humphrey Bogart whenever he needs assistance. We meet him just as he embarks upon a new case, when Juliet (Rachel Ward) shows up with suspicions about her father’s death. Rigby’s mission develops into a typically convoluted tale of murder, scrawled notes on dollar bills, cross dressing and fast-talking broads.
What makes the movie exceptional is the fact that it neatly splices in clips from other, classic pictures, in such an ingenious way that Steve Martin actually interacts with his vintage co-stars. This is done so seamlessly that if you were to watch it with someone who had no knowledge of who Bette Davis or Cary Grant were, they probably wouldn’t even notice. (Try it with a small child.) The sets, costumes and lighting are all perfectly blended, and the dialogue has been painstakingly selected to fit in with the ridiculous storyline. For film aficionados, part of the fun is to spot the star and the movie they were starring in; extra giggles abound when you know exactly what that line meant in its original context. Far from being an esoteric snob-fest, the experimental method of fitting in random scenes merely salutes the movie makers of yesteryear in the same affectionate way as clip show tributes such as That’s Entertainment.
Perhaps the fact that the patch-and-adapt method didn’t catch on and spawn a million similar attempts goes to show what an enormous amount of effort it takes. Some complain that the nature of squeezing in bits of other films makes the storyline unnecessarily convoluted; however, the average Raymond Chandler novel enjoyed more than its share of extraneous plot twists. It’s impossible not to admire the film makers’ audacity as they run roughshod over some of Hollywood’s finest efforts. Deception may actually be a little bit ruined for me.
If you would like to see Steve Martin infiltrating a prison disguised as Jimmy Cagney’s mother (“Pretend I’m crying. You comfort me.”) and shaving his tongue in preparation for a night on the town with Ingrid Bergman, this is a must-see.
