Popi

Certain films of the Sixties and Seventies carry with them attributes that makes the 21st century viewer ponder seriously if they could get made today. Directed by Arthur Hiller and released in 1969, Popi definitely fits that bill and despite its flaws it’s still a sometimes fascinating artifact. Alan Arkin plays, Abraham “Popi” Rodriguez, a Puerto Rican resident of Spanish Harlem and a widower with two sons, who works three jobs and is obsessed with a secretive crackpot scheme. “Papi” is Spanish slang for “father” and the film details Rodriguez’s elaborate and duplicitous machinations to engineer a better home for his children. The action shifts unceremoniously between slapstick, sentimentality and drama and it’s the first category of scenes usually fall flat. One involves Popi’s attempts to fix a flooded basement in a pair of improvised bucket shoes. Another finds him inadvertently impersonating a Bay of Pigs veteran and a Cuba Libre fundraiser. Both painfully parade Arkin’s sketchy sense of comic timing as well as a tacked on accent that’s as phony as his character’s trademark black beret.

The sons are suitably scrappy and streetwise, spending their days involved in precocious mischief making and roughhousing, and the script takes pains to emphasize the everyday dangers of their surroundings. In an altercation in a stairwell they witness a junkie decapitate a pigeon and Popi comes to the rescue with a can of bug spray. Later, they’re stripped and smeared with soot by a gang of peers. The Rodriguez apartment is also evidence of the family’s dire straits, a rattrap of a residence with strung Christmas lights and a decaying mannequin in a chair as presumable surrogate spouse. The rationale behind Popi’s plan is feasible, but the design and execution end up requiring a serious suspension of disbelief.

Production values largely leave the grittiness of the urban locations intact, but there are also some dated elements in other areas of the film. A treacly, syrup-and-strings theme songs sticks in the head despite best intentions to raise defenses and an opening credits sequence in a cemetery comes off as equal parts Courtship of Eddie’s Father and Little House on the Prairie, with long slo-mo shots and close-ups of the kids frolicking through the headstones. Cinematographer Andrew Lazlo has a naturalistic flair and is much better at capturing the crazy hustle and bustle of Spanish Harlem. There are some excellent aerial panormas of the neighborhood, its cultural color and tangible grime in Technicolor display. At least three scenes of child nudity, one involving humiliation, seem a bit suspect. The fruition of Popi’s scheme also contains a component of disturbing cruelty, one that’s ultimately difficult to reconcile with his character’s supposed paternalistic preoccupations and motivation. The dénouement is equally unconvincing, involving a rescue-at-sea, mistaken identities, an audience with the president, and several more opportunities for ill-fitting slapstick. Popi is a strange little flick: a footnote in Arkin’s long career, but one that is curiously evocative of time and place.