Silence is Gould

I got the recommendation for The Silent Partner (1978) from a podcast called Movies That Made Me, the official podcast of Joe Dante’s Trailers from Hell. Sadly, I forget which episode. See if you can find it!

This very Canadian production stars Elliot Gould as a teller in a bank in a Toronto mall. He seems a little quiet, keeps to himself, but does flirt a little with one of the other tellers (Susannah York). In fact, while flirting, he finds a discarded stick-up note, and begins to suspect that the bank may be robbed. Later, he notices that the mall Santa has a sign with the same handwriting, and figures that he is the robber.

The next day, he brings a lunchbox to work, and throughout the day puts money from transactions in the box, not his drawer. Then, when the bank is robbed, he hangs over a small amount and trips the silent alarm. The robber takes off, and he takes the cash home. A perfect crime.

Except the robber is Christopher Plummer, and not the nice Capt. von Trapp. Here he is a hip sadist, looking a bit like Anton Chigurh. And he knows where Gould lives.

Now this is the good part. Gould is terrified of Plummer, but instead of panicking, he comes up with a plan and turns the tables on him. He is just a bored, ordinary guy who collects tropical fish and plays chess, but he’s not going to back down on this.

After this, the movie takes a kind of turn. Time goes by, Plummer is in jail, Gould’s father dies. At the funeral, Gould meets one of his father’s nurses, the sexy Celine Gomez. You can see that he’s thinking of taking her into his confidence and running away with her, to start a new life as a new man. But is he really safe from Plummer? And what of Susannah York?

As a tricky caper movie, this is good to very good. As a psychological thriller, it’s interesting. There’s a lot about what happens to boring, old bank teller Gould, when he gets into an adventure. In fact, I imagined several alternative movies:

• The meek teller is robbed, and becomes a minor celebrity, with all the women coming on to him, just because he’s associated with danger.
• Same as above, but with the twist that he was in on the caper.
• Same as above, but the twist is that the money fell into his briefcase accidentally.
• ...

Something I wasn’t clear on was Elliot Gould’s looks. He’s referred to as “that handsome teller” several times. Is he supposed to be good looking? He looks like a tired basset to me. Maybe that’s the idea - that an ordinary man looks sexy when something interesting happens?