Thoughts on The Man with One Red Shoe

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*Richard Drew (Tom Hanks), not completely seduced by Maddy (Lori Singer), zips up his pants. He ends up catching some of her impressive '80s hair. They're forced to awkwardly crouch while walking to the bathroom for some scissors. It's watched by Maddy's colleagues and would-be CIA Director Cooper (Dabney Coleman).*

"This guy's right out of a circus."

"No, that's what he wants us to think."

I hadn't originally planned to watch both The Man with One Red Shoe and the French film it's based on, The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe. Seeing Black Shoe allowed me to identify the handful of plot elements exclusive to Red Shoe. For the most part, though, the movies are nearly identical.

Red Shoe was written by Robert Klane and directed by Stan Dragoti. Black Shoe was written by Francis Veber and Yves Robert, with Robert directing. I'll use bold type for what's new in Red Shoe.

Cooper (Coleman, Bernard Blier in Black Shoe) is gunning for his boss' job. He's gone to the trouble of orchestrating a scandal involving drug smuggling, which Maddy helped execute. Director Ross (Charles Durning, Jean Rochfort) is aware he's been set up, not to mention that his home is bugged. With 48 hours until his testimony before a Senate committee, Ross sets a trap for Cooper. Brown (Edward Herrmann, Paul Le Person) is to make contact with someone who can supposedly clear Ross' name. Actually, it's whomever Brown wants it to be.

"It was his shoe. I could have picked a black man with a green raincoat. There was a Japanese guy with five cameras. I could have picked him. But I preferred the guy with the red shoe."

Red Shoe takes nearly 14 minutes to introduce Richard. Black Shoe takes nearly 15 minutes to introduce François (Pierre Richard). Either way, try getting away with that in a modern movie. The violinist hero's distinctive footwear are the result of a prank pulled by his friend and fellow musician, timpani player Morris (Jim Belushi, Jean Carmet). The joke is on Morris, because Richard is having an affair with his flutist wife, Paula (Carrie Fisher, Colette Castel). Richard's ready to break it off with Paula, who's especially fond of their Tarzan-themed sex game. In Red Shoe, the game includes imitating Cheetah. In Black Shoe, it has nothing to do with Tarzan and includes imitating a horse.

Anyway, Cooper's team, including Maddy, who falls in love while looking at his childhood photos*, investigates Richard's apartment. Circumstances lead them (and Brown's men, who aren't in on the scheme) to believe Richard's a mastermind. Morris, meanwhile, is suspicious of Paula's fidelity, while Richard's ambitions as a composer are unwittingly furthered by Maddy. 

*Christine (Mireille Darc) falls for François in Black Shoe, but it doesn't seem to happen until after their zipper mishap.

In both movies, the leading lady hears the hero's new piece. In Red Shoe, it's romantic sounding (Thomas Newman composed the movie's score) and first absentmindedly performed during a concert, to the ire of the conductor (David Ogden Stiers) before being repeated during the supposed alone time. In Black Shoe, it's unpleasant sounding and first performed during the supposed alone time. François already ruined the concert by absentmindedly playing something else before losing his bow and having a string break. Each time, Morris/Maurice is edgy and Paula/Paulette is upset. Meanwhile, Cooper is convinced Richard will pass a secret message through his music.

"Hulse, I want you to put a special mike on him tonight. One that isolates everything he plays from the orchestra. Carson, hook it into the GBLX-1000 computer."

"GBLX!"

"That thing will break any code."

"But it controls our missile defense system!"

"Honey! What are the odds of the Russians attacking on a Thursday night? Come on!"

(The punchline is that the notes, of course, translate to gibberish.)

Reviewing Gotcha!, another caper from 1985, Roger Ebert regretted that more attention wasn't given to the female lead. Maddy and Christine get some defining moments, but they're both ultimately buried by the plot. Hanks, alas, has nothing to play. Richard is not especially heroic or clever. Neither is François, but I could at least buy him being mistaken for eccentric. Red Shoe is carried by Coleman, Durning and Herrmann, talented actors let down by their roles' constraints.

I didn't expect to be as fascinated as I am with the differences in French and American storytelling. Red Shoe adds more motivation to the mayhem (Cooper's race against the clock, Maddy falling in love sooner with Richard). Black Shoe doesn't appear to have a problem with mayhem for its own sake. There's a few corpses by the end of both movies, but Black Shoe seems to shrug them off.

"Three dead men are in your apartment."

On their own, the Shoes are worth a Not Recommended grade. Together, it's Recommended with Reservations.

Thoughts:

-- Box Office: Grossing $8.6 million on a $16 million budget, this opened outside the top five and came in at No. 93 for 1985.

-- Critic's Corner: "What was once an airy comedy of errors has been staged in a more literal sitcom style, which makes the story's silly turns of circumstance look absurd," Janet Maslin wrote. Roger Ebert: "If any character in this movie had an IQ higher than his age, the plot would be figured out and the movie would be over."

-- Both Red Shoe and Black Shoe have the hero accidentally brushing his teeth with shampoo. It's because the agent who was checking bathroom items didn't have time to put things exactly back as they were. A point for Black Shoe, though, for the gag where an agent takes apart a nesting doll.

-- Neither movie confirms it, but I got the impression that Cooper and Maddy and their French counterparts hooked up at some point. In Red Shoe, Copper has the presents Richard sent checked for bugs. The punchline is that the fattest member of the team gets to eat every piece of chocolate.

-- Fanservice Junction: For the women, we've got Singer sporting a backless dress that reveals her butt crack (repeating a gag from Black Shoe) and Fisher wearing leopard print underwear. Richard and Paula's bedroom scene includes Hanks wearing red briefs. Depending on how you look at it, that's a step up or down from Pierre Richard's bare butt in Black Shoe.

-- I'll say it again: Pierre Richard looked like the love child of Larry Fine and Dick Cavett.

-- Hey, It's ...!: David L. Lander, Tom Noonan, Gerrit Graham and Charles Levin.

-- Hey, It's 1985!: This was the first of Hanks' two movies that year, both released in the summer. It's also the first of producer Victor Drai's two movies for 1985, also both released in the summer. Drai's previous movie was another Americanized comedy, The Woman in Red. "(He) appears to be making a career out of demonstrating how poorly French farce can travel," Maslin wrote. It's also the first of Klane's two movies for 1985, also both released in the summer. For the record, the other movies are Volunteers (Hanks), The Bride (Drai) and National Lampoon's European Vacation (Klane).

-- Hey, It's the Eighties!: Cooper's operation involved a vehicle that had cocaine hidden in its tires. It's dropped, resulting in the coke coating the car. Once the Moroccan dock workers realize what it is, they run to get their share. 

-- A Tale of Two Endings. Red Shoe: Richard knows the truth, Paula stays with Morris, Maddy has testified against Cooper (who I believe was still unaware of Richard's innocence) and Brown, who wanted to keep Richard from being killed (unlike Ross, who didn't care), is the new CIA director. Black Shoe: François may or may not know the truth, Paulette's still interested in adultery, the sordid intelligence business has been exposed apparently without Christine's help, Milan (Cooper) was shot to death (just after putting two and two together) and Toulouse (Ross) keeps his job, despite gambling with François' life. Toulouse even suggests to Perrache, who was just as compassionate as Brown, that François might make an ideal spy.

-- "Walk tall, you're in the string section."

-- Next: The Legend of Billie Jean. On deck: The Black Cauldron, National Lampoon's European Vacation. Soon: Fright Night.