Cop Song

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE BLACK MARBLE

Directed by Harold Becker

Screenplay by Joseph Wambaugh

A police station is not the first place anyone would go to look for a little romance, but audiences willing to put up with Writer Wambaugh's customary cop grunginess will find in The Black Marble a sweetly eccentric love story.

Sergeant A.M. Valnikov (Robert Foxworth) is of Russian descent, and so, perhaps, comes by his chronic melancholia naturally. A recent divorce and -- it is gradually revealed -- his investigations of a particularly ugly series of child murders have done nothing to lighten his mood. He is in fact drinking his way into early retirement. Sergeant Natalie Zimmerman (Paula Prentiss) is a brisk, no-nonsense sort of woman, very proud of the fact that she has finally got her life perfectly organized. She keeps protesting her assignment as Valnikov's partner, though everyone (except perhaps Valnikov) under stands that she is the last hope of getting him back in shape. In this situation true love cannot be far behind.

The case that provides the opportunity for opposites to attract is the dognaping of a champion schnauzer by a trainer (Harry Dean Stanton) with a bad gambling debt to pay off. The victim, besides the hound, is a poor little rich girl (Barbara Babcock), who regards the pooch as the only good thing in her life. The crime is just ludicrous enough to penetrate Valnikov's self-absorption. Besides, he is a pet lover himself (he has a parakeet and a gerbil). Galvanized, he begins to notice Natalie and then to woo her with Russian vodka and folk songs, notably one about nightingales singing in the raspberry bushes. Then he manages to rescue the dog and save Natalie from marriage to a careerist cop, who obviously does not waste time on stolen dogs or singing birds.

Director Becker sometimes permits Wambaugh's penchant for psychological overexplanation and realistic background to jostle aside the film's essentially comic spirit. Most of the time, though, characters and situations are permitted to develop their own odd and ultimately catchy rhythms. There is no slickness to the movie. Prentiss is sharp without being abrasive, sweet without being sticky. Foxworth offers a daringly understated performance. He attracts attention and then affection through the kind of patience and politesse that one rarely encounters these days in actors playing lead roles. His work alone would make The Black Marble worth seeing, but there is an endearing goofiness about the whole enterprise that is commendable and cheering.

--Richard Schickel

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