The Man Who Wasn't There is a 2001 neo-noir crime film written, directed, produced and co-edited by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Michael Badalucco, Richard Jenkins, Scarlett Johansson, Jon Polito, Tony Shalhoub, and James Gandolfini. The film is set in 1949 and tells the story of Ed Crane, a withdrawn barber who leads an ordinary life in a small California town with his wife, who he suspects is having an affair with her boss. Crane's situation changes when a stranger comes to the barbershop and offers him the opportunity to join him as a partner in a promising new business, in exchange for an investment of ten thousand dollars. Drawn to the idea, Crane plans to blackmail his wife's lover for the money.
The film is in black-and-white and employs voiceover narration, honoring classic film noir. It differs by including classical music, setting the plot in a small town, and featuring a protagonist from outside the criminal underworld. The Coens began developing the idea from a 1940s haircut poster they saw while filming The Hudsucker Proxy. The plot was influenced by James M. Cain's crime novels, primarily Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce. Aesthetically, The Man Who Wasn't There was inspired by films from the 1940s and 1950s—including Shadow of a Doubt—along with science fiction films and documentaries of the period.
The film premiered and participated in the official selection at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, where Joel Coen won the award for best director. Its theatrical response was lukewarm, although it was well-received by film critics, who praised Roger Deakins' cinematography and the performances, especially Thornton's. Media critics in The Guardian, the BBC, and The Austin Chronicle referred to it as one of the best films of the year. The National Board of Review included it among its top ten films of the year and awarded Thornton best actor. Deakins received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography and the film achieved multiple nominations and awards from other organizations.
Plot In 1949 Santa Rosa, California, Ed Crane is a quiet barber working in his brother-in-law Frank’s barbershop. His wife Doris, a bookkeeper, struggles with a drinking problem, and their marriage is strained. One day, a customer named Creighton Tolliver tells Ed about an investment opportunity in a new technology called dry cleaning. Tolliver persuades Ed to invest $10,000, but Ed, desperate for money, decides to blackmail Doris's boss, "Big Dave" Brewster, whom he suspects of having an affair with her. Ed anonymously demands money from Brewster, who embezzles funds from his department store to meet the blackmail demands.
However, Brewster soon uncovers the scheme and confronts Ed. After Tolliver implicates Ed in the plan, Brewster beats him to death. In a desperate attempt to protect himself, Ed fatally stabs Brewster with a cigar knife in self-defense. Despite this, the police discover discrepancies in the store’s financial records and arrest Doris, suspecting her of both embezzling the money and murdering Brewster.
Ed hires Freddy Riedenschneider, a Sacramento defense attorney, who arrives in town and immediately starts living lavishly on the defense fund Doris’s family raised by mortgaging the barbershop. On the day of Doris’s trial, she is found dead, having hanged herself in her jail cell. It is later revealed that Doris was pregnant when she died, though she and Ed had not been intimate for years. Ed’s world unravels further as Frank, now deeply in debt and consumed by grief, turns to alcohol.
Amid the chaos, Ed begins spending time with Rachel "Birdy" Abundas, a teenage girl and friend of the family, listening to her play the piano. Ed fantasizes about launching her musical career and becoming her manager, but his dreams are crushed when a music teacher bluntly informs him that Birdy has no talent. On the way home, Birdy makes an overt sexual advance toward Ed, causing him to lose control of his car and crash.
Ed wakes up in the hospital to find himself arrested for murder. Tolliver’s body, beaten and found with Ed’s investment contract, leads the police to believe that Ed coerced Doris into embezzling the money and murdered Tolliver when he discovered the scheme. With no resources left, Ed mortgages his house to hire Riedenschneider for his defense. However, during Riedenschneider’s opening statement, Frank attacks Ed in a fit of rage, and the judge declares a mistrial. With his defense in shambles, Ed throws himself at the mercy of the court, but the judge sentences him to death.
While awaiting execution on death row, Ed writes his life story to sell to a pulp magazine. One night, he sees a UFO outside the prison, which he walks away from. As Ed is led to the electric chair, he reflects on his life and decisions, finding peace with his past. He regrets nothing and holds hope that, in the afterlife, he and Doris will be free from the imperfections of the mortal world.
Cast
Background The idea of writing a film starring a barber was inspired by a poster that the Coen brothers saw while filming The Hudsucker Proxy (1994). "We filmed a scene in a barbershop, and there was a poster on the wall showing all the different 1940s-style haircuts," recalled Joel Coen. "It was a fixture on the set, and we were always looking at it. So we started thinking about the guy who actually did the haircuts, and the story began to take shape. It really evolved from that haircut poster." The directors took the title of the film from the 1899 poem written by William Hughes Mearns entitled "Antigonish" and they chose it in reference to the character of the barber, to reflect his emotional emptiness.
Set in 1949, the plot—according to Joel Coen—"is heavily influenced" by the work of writer James M. Cain, in particular, the novels Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and Mildred Pierce. Despite being a neo-noir story, The Coens replaced the underworld setting with a typical American town with ordinary people. "The criminal element here is sort of inadvertent. The hero sort of stumbles into it," Ethan Coen explained. This storytelling device was an homage to Cain, whose stories usually featured characters with conventional jobs who, motivated by need or greed, ended up involved in a crime. Other conventions were present in The Man Who Wasn't There, such as the plan to get money quickly, sexual misadventures, and coincidences of fate. The failure of a "perfect plan" to raise money appears in Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, both novels narrated by down-and-out working-class men during the Great Depression.
The Coens named Shadow of a Doubt as a reference to the film and had in mind the science fiction genre of the 1950s. The film's aesthetics were influenced by science fiction cinema and "cheap documentaries of the '50s". Cinematographer Roger Deakins drew inspiration for his work from the 1940s and 1950s films such as This Gun for Hire, The Blue Dahlia, Kiss Me Deadly, and Touch of Evil. Likewise, The Atlantic Christopher Orr compared the voiceover and Crane's reserved character with the character of Robert Mitchum in the film Out of the Past (1947). The Coens referred to other works through character names, as in the department store Nirdlinger or Dietrichson —surnames used in Double Indemnity—Riedenschneider —the surname of a character from The Asphalt Jungle — or the name of Tolliver's hotel, "The Hobart Arms", an homage to the novel The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
In addition to Cain's novels and film noir, the story borrowed ideas from existentialist literature, such as Albert Camus's The Stranger. In addition to noting the similarities in both works, authors and critics compared the disconnection with reality and Ed's attitude with that of the protagonist of Camus's novel. Through his main character, The Man Who Wasn't There explores the existentialist view of despair, a theme reminiscent of philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Authors Jean-Pierre Boulé and Enda McCaffrey compared Crane's attempt to escape from his routine life with Jean-Paul Sartre's idea of a "search for transcendence". The film represented the protagonist's relationship with the dry cleaning business, Abundas, and UFOs. Although The Man Who Wasn't There, cataloged as postmodern, inherited film noir thematic and narrative elements, at the same time it explored concepts of the post World War II period, portraying America's early postwar years. The story was contextualized by events such as UFOs, references to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Werner Heisenberg's reflections on humanity, and the idea of succeeding in an age of opportunity. The plot alludes to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle through the character of defense attorney Riedenschneider, who refers to that principle more than once.
Production Development The Coen brothers began writing the script in the mid-1990s, after filming The Big Lebowski. The brothers moved to Ireland — where Frances McDormand was working — to continue writing. The Coens sent the script to producers Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan of Working Title; they intended to start production in 1999, but taking advantage of George Clooney's availability, they dedicated themselves to O Brother, Where Art Thou? Following completion of O Brother, The Man Who Wasn't There was financed independently by Working Title, Gramercy Pictures, and Good Machine, raising an approximate budget of $20 million.
The Coens wrote the characters of Doris and Frank for McDormand and Michael Badalucco, respectively, and cast Billy Bob Thornton, an actor with whom they had not worked before, for the title role. Thornton accepted the role before reading the script: "I knew that it would be good. There are certain people you know you can't go wrong with." The Coens had to convince James Gandolfini, who had just finished filming The Mexican and was about to return to The Sopranos, to join the cast as Big Dave Brewster; he finally agreed after reading the script and finding Big Dave "different from anything else I've ever done. He's kind of a big lug, a bit of a loudmouth, and clotheshorse kind of guy." Coens regulars Jon Polito and Tony Shalhoub soon joined the cast, followed by Adam Alexi-Malle, Katherine Borowitz, Richard Jenkins, and Scarlett Johansson. Jenkins initially declined the casting call because he had been rejected from three previous Coen productions.
Filming Filming began on June 26, 2000, in California and ended on September 1, after ten weeks. Deakins' cinematography was simple and traditional. Most of the shots were taken with the camera at eye level, with normal lenses and a long depth of field. Compared to older American film noir, Deakins used a wide range of grays and attempted to create low contrast without many strong shadows, using fewer and larger lights. He used contemporary technologies and wanted the film to reflect the era in which it was made, noting that "we're not trying to make an old movie." It was filmed with color 35mm film and converted to black and white during post-production. This procedure was due, in part, to technical reasons since in recent decades the availability of black and white film rolls had become scarce. However, due to contractual and marketing requirements, it was released in color in some countries. Joel Coen noted that "the film wasn't made to be seen in color" and that in color it would look "horribly out of place" due to grayscale neutralizing colors outside the time frame of the plot.