Absence of Malice

Absence of Malice

There are two ways of looking at “Absence of Malice,” and I choose the other one. The first way is to approach it as a critique of this film’s depiction of an investigative newspaper reporter no respectable journalist would do the things Sally Field does to, with and about Paul Newman in this movie, we might say. She is a disgrace to her profession.

What are her journalistic sins here? She lets someone leak the facts of a secret investigation to her; she prints an unattributed story about the investigation then becomes, as they say, “personally involved with the subject of the investigation”; that is, she falls in love with Paul Newman. Then she prints another story she should never have printed, and an innocent bystander commits suicide.

But you see what I mean. Would real investigative reporters make such mistakes? No they wouldn’t not usually anyway and if they did they shouldn’t have; nor would their editors let them get away with it (the unbelievable laxity of the editors in “Absence of Malice” creates the movie’s greatest credibility gap). But let’s face it: Sometimes newspapers do print stories like the ones Field allows herself here; sometimes news does leak from investigations without official attribution; etc.

One day a colleague cornered me at the water cooler to complain that no reporter would ever sleep with a news source.

“Oh yeah?” said a woman who was passing by. “Who was the news source?”

“I’d sleep with him in a minute,” she said.

And so we leave our first or socially responsible approach to “Absence of Malice,” for our second or romantic one: Not only did I like this movie despite its factual and ethical problems I’m not even so sure those problems matter very much for most viewers. In my professional life I am quick to spot inaccuracies in movies about newspaper reporters, but where was I when the archaeologists were squirming over Harrison Ford’s barbaric conduct in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”?

The fact is this movie is about a woman’s spunk and a common man’s sneaky revenge, and on that level it works fine. Sally Field’s newspaper reporter is created by a quietly original performance that is not Norma Rae with a pencil behind her ear but an earnest, nervous, likable young woman who makes mistakes because she listens too closely to her heart, or ambition or editor (which of us cannot say the same?).

Paul Newman plays the role of a liquor distributor who is completely innocent of the murder he is being suspected for (or so we’re told). With his father having been connected to organized crime, however, the press has fun dragging his name through the mud and it’s this vengeance that makes the audience’s day.

Two other strong performances are worth mentioning: Wilford Brimley as a lawman who commandeers a kangaroo court and reduces everyone but Newman to tears; and John Harkins, as a newspaper libel lawyer who manages to make libel laws real not only for Sally Field but even for us.

There’s an apocryphal story about a famous Chicago editor who was presented with a major scoop obtained by dubious means. First he convinced himself that the story was true. Then, he gave the classic instruction: “Print it tonight, and call the lawyers in the morning.” That’s an editor who might have had fun at “Absence of Malice.” He would not have approved of what Sally Field did in this movie. But he would have known why she did it.

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