THE SILENT PARTNER (1978)
“You’re going to be so traumatized by Captain von Trapp in this film.”
After funding kitchen sink drama films in the 1960s that no one voluntarily watched outside of the country, the Canadian government came up with an admirably baller tax scheme in 1974 to generate exportable commercial movies—a full one hundred percent of a producer’s investment in a Canadian film could be recouped in taxes. One hundred percent—what could go wrong?
For eight glorious years, Canada’s gift to world culture was its bonkers genre films, often starring American and British actors experiencing career lulls or divorce debts. The films ranged from the sublime to the unwatchable. Sometimes literally unwatchable. Despite launching an entire generation’s worth of careers, and some genuinely timeless hits like Scanners, My Bloody Valentine, Out of the Blue, Meatballs, The Changeling, or Outrageous! many films were never distributed. “Producers” would often disappear with their tax credit in pocket before a production could finish. Canadian tax shelter films earned such a criminal reputation that completion bonds came into wide usage across the industry for the first time.
Let the above historical plaque of an introduction reinforce how much of an oddball triumph a film like The Silent Partner is.
With a perfect performance by Elliott Gould, an unnerving villain turn by Christopher Plummer, and a precision time-piece script by a young Curtis Hanson (8 Mile, LA Confidential), The Silent Partner is what would happen if the Coen Brothers had ever tried to adapt Nabokov. Elliott Gould plays a bank teller in Toronto who intuits that Christopher Plummer is casing his bank under the guise of a mall Santa. Gould then uses the impending robbery to hide his own theft and his decision begins a twisted pas de deux. (Apparently those required French classes weren’t completely lost on me.)
How Toronto is The Silent Partner? It’s so Toronto it opens with a tilt pan on the Eaton Centre and ends with a credit plate that includes the CN Tower, Trinity Square, and City Hall in the same shot. But more than just a tax-mandated location, Toronto has its dirty subconscious captured in a way that took Emily Schultz and I back to our time there in the aughts while recording this commentary.
Brian J Davis: We were talking before about our first Elliott Gould memories and we figured out that us—being 1980s kids—we never saw him first in anything good like M*A*S*H, The Long Goodbye, or Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. We first saw him in his Disney movies! Like, mine is The Last Flight of Noah’s Ark. Yours was—
Emily Schultz: The Devil and Max Devlin. The thing about Elliott Gould is he’s a dad-crush. Maybe a lot of people’s first dad crush?
BJD: Until watching this a couple of times this month, I had only ever seen the bank robbery scene because it was in this beloved horror and thriller supercut documentary from the 1980s called Terror in the Aisles. We’d rent this and just write down all the films you would later try to track down: Dawn of the Dead, Dressed to Kill, even Klute. But I could never, ever find The Silent Partner during the VHS days, and that’s a shame because this is a gem of a film.
ES: I have such a vague memory of maybe seeing this.
BJD: I’ll put this out there. I think this is the best performance ever by Elliott Gould. He’s usually so good at being Elliott Gould, but here he’s actually disappearing into his character. He’s almost like an Antonioni character, a cipher. And here’s a little background. This was directed by Daryl Duke who came up at the same time as Ted Kotcheff. (Wake in Fright, First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s.) And that allows me drop in that you edited Ted’s memoirs a few years ago.
ES: So this director started in live TV for the CBC?
BJD: Exactly, and like Ted he had to leave the country to find work as well, because there was literally no feature film industry. And both of them came back for the tax shelter years.
ES: Wait. Elliott Gould finds a bank robber’s test note at work?
BJD: And it leads to one of the best hooks I’ve ever seen in a thriller. He recognizes the handwriting on the note as being the same as a mall Santa’s sign. Now he knows that Santa is going to rob the bank.
ES: Old Canadian money!
BJD: Canadian bills have never been easy to incorporate into slang. Like, “It’s all about the Bordens baby.” Doesn’t work, does it?
ES: I didn’t know Captain von Trapp was in this.
BJD: You’re going to be so traumatized at what Captain von Trapp does in this film.
ES: I like Christopher Plummer’s saucy little mesh shirt.
BJD: And now he learns on the news that the robbery where he only got a few hundred dollars is reported by the bank to have been $50,000. Canadian, which would be—
ES: About $400 US? Why are people lining up to see Elliott Gould at the bank?
BJD: He’s the handsome teller who survived the bank robbery. That’s how easy it is to be a celebrity in Canada.
ES: And now he’s putting the money he stole into a deposit box at the bank.
BJD: It’s brilliant. What else would a banker do with money?
ES: I can’t handle watching Elliott Gould do bad things.
BJD: But his plan is so brilliant you love him. And that’s part of his complexity. He’s the nice guy at the bank. Who also steals $50,000 during someone else’s robbery. And now his boss is asking him to escort Susannah York to the Christmas party.
ES: Definite nod to The Apartment.
BJD: Exactly. He’s a stand-in. A blank slate-character. That’s so unique for Elliott Gould.
ES: Wait. Who’s making it with the boss’s wife now?
BJD: This is one swinging bank! I cannot keep up with the couplings at this branch.
ES: Now he’s being stalked by Christopher Plummer at home. Oh my god. The mail slot shot.
BJD: On the surface this looks like it’s going to be some 1970s caper and yes, the thriller plot is so tight, but the tone and intensity is like a horror film. If there were a couple more bodies, I’d say this would be an example of a Canadian giallo. Maybe the only one.
ES: The subway is so clean! What is their secret?
BJD: Okay, do you say “Ea-ton” Centre or “Eatin’” Centre?
ES: Apparently I say Eatin.’ When a friend from San Francisco visited while we lived there, she needed some clothing item, and I said, “Let’s go to the Eaton Centre.” And she was confused and asked, “Is that what you call restaurants in Canada? Eatin’ centres?” Now Elliott Gould has stolen a van and planted it at the bank robber’s apartment so he’ll get arrested for something else?
BJD: It’s so inspiring. Our hero is a total sociopath.
ES: Wait, who died?
BJD: Elliott Gould’s father. Which is a semi-important plot point but it does slow this down a bit. If this movie has one sin, the pacing does have novel-like detours. It’s a fantastic script by Curtis Hanson, based on a Norwegian crime novel, but a more confident adaptation might have trimmed those. And now he meets Alanis Morissette’s mother.
ES: For real?
BJD: No. I’m just calling this French-Canadian actress that because she looks exactly like she could be Alanis Morissette’s mother.
ES: They’re driving down the Gardiner Expressway with the top down! They so did not actually film this in real winter.
BJD: This is really such a snapshot of old Toronto turning into new Toronto. His bank is building a tower at Bloor Street. The Eaton Centre is only a year old here.
ES: And his French-Canadian girlfriend reveals that she was sent by Christopher Plummer to watch over his interests.
BJD: There are silent partners within silent partners in this movie. Oh my god, here it is. They’re on a date at Captain John’s!
ES: This was that boat restaurant in the harbor? I never went.
BJD: I did! And I learned an invaluable lesson. Of all the ironic things you should do, ironic eating is not one of them.
ES: It looks pretty fancy in here. There are epaulets.
BJD: By my time it was one of those tourist trap restaurants that stayed around way too long. It smelled like you were dining under a pier. The fryer grease coated every surface. It was Lovecraftian and I got so sick.
ES: Oh no.
BJD: And in true Canadian fashion, there’s a historical plaque for this restaurant!
ES: Can he trust Alanis Morissette’s mother?
BJD: You’re the only one here who’s had a French-Canadian girlfriend. You tell us.
ES: They’re very trustworthy. Outside of being really into flirting with, like, everyone.
BJD: Let them be French! She is such a great, beautiful actress and what Captain von Trapp is about to do…
[Both] Oh God, no!
BJD: Someone was watching Dario Argento films at the time.
ES: This was not the fish tank murder tableau I was expecting.
BJD: This is the dynamic that The Silent Partner captures. Toronto is not a city that allows itself to be haunted. There’s this constant boosterism to go past the bad stuff, and there is plenty of bad stuff. Underneath its reputation as the most uptight big city in North America, Toronto is quite dismember-y.
ES: The fish tank is now somehow unbroken.
BJD: Emily with the Cinema Sins! And the paperboy capering scene, as Elliott Gould is trying to get her body out of his apartment. We’re not even going to mention that the paperboy has one hand.
ES: You’re right. And coming right after that murder scene.
BJD: This is a Canadian film. An American film would never make these decisions.
ES: “It’s not a foundation, it’s a vault.” Elliott Gould is now copy-editing his nemesis while they’re trying to settle business—not advised.
BJD: And now she’s in the foundation of his bank’s new tower at Bloor. This film is literally building towers over old crimes.
ES: You know, I remember a few times cutting through the Eaton Centre feeling like I just buried someone at a construction site.
BJD: And now a second robbery to redo everything. His bank crush figures out what Elliott Gould has been up to and kind of blackmails him into a relationship.
ES: This is so great: how can you top a Santa Claus disguise?
BJD: Christopher Plummer in Margaret Thatcher drag.
ES: Elliott Gould is shot!
BJD: He was movie star shot. Non lethally in the shoulder.
ES: “I always wondered what it was like to be shot. It hurts.” Such a great line.
BJD: And all the landmarks we can cram in one frame, quick blur out for credits, and Toronto will never play itself this hard again in a major film…until Scott Pilgrim.
ES: One thing we didn’t talk about. Why the gay signaling for Christopher Plummer’s character? The mesh shirt, the eyeliner.
BJD: At first, I thought they were going for a “new wave” look. It is 1978. But with the manicure they really are coding him as–
ES: Being a gender or sexual outsider during the time.
BJD: It could also have been Plummer’s decision. It’s a very actorly thing to assemble these touches to start living the character.
ES: This also contrasts him with Elliott Gould and adds that Nabokovian level to the two male leads. And Christopher Plummer is terrifying.
BJD: It’s ultimately a movie about unstable identities. Everyone has a silent partner, whether they know it or not, and that reveals who you are. But in the very end Gould gets a new partner…the woman he loves!
ES: Are they are in love? She seems like another silent partner.
BJD: Here’s the thing. I didn’t buy the romantic ending, at all. Elliott Gould’s banker is such a sociopath I give her two months to live being around him.
ES: I wouldn’t say that. He has never directly hurt anyone.
BJD: Oh, but he’ll bury a body! He’ll get rid of an inconvenient body in a building foundation. That’s kind of a bad sign.
ES: You know what. You’re right. I would not go on a date with that guy.
BJD: But a French-Canadian con woman?
ES: Who hasn’t?
I love this movie! It is the only Christmas movie I like!