plug: The Silent Partner (1978)

"One night when you come home, you'll find me inside, waiting for you."

Welcome to today’s plug, a quick recommendation of an oft-forgotten film, cult classic, or movie that is dying to be rewatched // We send plugs every Tuesday + Thursday // 

Elliot Gould and Christopher Plummer in a Canadian giallo. Sounds fuckin’ rad amirite? I went into 1978’s The Silent Partner assuming it’d be pretty dope (‘70s thriller, love Elliot Gould, also dig Plummer quite a bit, especially in villain roles) but I hadn’t expected it to be as stylish and violent and arthouse-trashy and totally up my alley as it is. If you like to watch cool movies that are only tangentially related to Christmas during the holidays, this is as good a pick as any.

The Silent Partner is a Hitchcockian thriller centered around a heist-gone-sideways at a small bank at the Eaton Center mall in Toronto (great early-mall movie à la Dawn of the Dead). Mild-mannered but restless teller Miles Cullen accidentally unearths a planned robbery at the bank when he finds an unfinished hold-up note and matches it with the handwriting of a Santa working in the mall. Cullen takes advantage of his foreknowledge and systematically hides stacks of cash at his teller window so when the mall Santa does show up to rob the bank, Cullen gives the robber a small fraction of what he asks for, keeps his own stash, and reports all of it as taken in the robbery.

The rest of the movie is a seedy battle of wits between Cullen and Santa/robber Harry Reikle (Plummer), a violent, psychopathic criminal with thick eyeliner and loud gold-chain necklace like something out of a Nicolas Winding Refn movie (if you’ll indulge the Andycore reference). I read in the IMDB trivia that Mick Jagger was up for this part, which only made me happier that they gave fucking Captain Von Trap a chance to go ham with it instead. He just crushes.

Then there’s Gould, whose resting vibe I’ve aspired to ever since I saw first saw him in Robert Altman’s M.A.S.H. Don’t know what it is about Gould but he’s got his own way of being equally at home as a fast-talking cool guy or as a regular schmuck who’s in over his head. As is the case with all of his best roles, he gets to stretch both muscles in The Silent Partner — an ideal specimen to match confidence and wits with the more aggressive Plummer, and pass for a believable sex symbol amidst all the office romance (which is a nice way of saying a post-sexual revolution/pre-80s office culture where everyone is fucking). With shades of Jack Nicholson’s weird charm, Woody Allen’s nebbish timing, and Warren Beatty’s roguish gentility, Gould is like the platonic ideal of the ‘70s alt-leading man. This movie is as much a reminder of that as it is anything else.

Stylistically, The Silent Partner is as dank and trashy and ultra-violent as an Italian giallo but it’s also very Canadian, which is to say it’s not only filmed in Canada but actually takes place in Canada and looks like it’s in Canada (I think) and doesn’t quite feel like a Hollywood movie. Plus it’s got a great mix of unknown and recognizable Canadian actors (including John Candy in one of his earliest film roles).

I finally rented The Silent Partner after years of seeing you bozos on Film Twitter post stills of Christopher Plummer in the Santa suit and Elliot Gould under noir lighting with, like, dank ‘70s Christmas lights and shit in the background every Holiday season and making me feel left out. Peer pressure worked this time around, and I’m glad my internet peers forced me to uncover this gem for myself in 2020. If you’re looking for something to double-bill with Black Christmas or Die Hard or any other alt-holiday movie you’re planning to fire up this week, consider taking The Silent Partner for a spin.

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