Murder, My Sweet

Private dick Phil Marlowe is hired by a "paltry, foppish man" to accompany him on a midnight assignation. What follows is a glorious piece of Chandleriana, a ganglion of a plot involving a jade necklace, a jailbird who carries a torch for a showgirl, a "big-league blonde" with a rich old husband and an eye for private eyes, and more narrative twists and turns than a Restoration comedy on acid.

Will Moose be reunited with Velma? Who's the brunette in the gulch? What is Anthor's precise relationship with Marriott? How many more times can Marlowe get slugged from behind without having his skull disintegrate?

Golden tenor Dick Powell may not be the obvious choice to play Marlowe, but in fact he turns in THE definitive performance. Chandler once defined the ideal hero in one of his essays as a special man, but at the same time a man of the people. Not amazingly bright, subject to bouts of confusion and wrong-headed wilfulness, but for all that a tough, decent, dry-humoured guy who just happens to be as sexy as hell. Powell delivers.

Watch out for a remarkable dream sequence after Marlowe is forcibly injected with heroin (yes, heroin). Expressionist cinema was never as evocative as here!

All in all, the film is an example of a genre captured at its apex - "like lighting a stick of dynamite, and telling it not to go off"!

'Murder, My Sweet' is based on Raymond Chandler's classic detective novel 'Farewell, My Lovely'. The book was later filmed in the 1970s under its original title starring Robert Mitchum. The Mitchum version is actually more faithful, but for some reason nowhere near as entertaining. 'Murder, My Sweet' tones down some of the racial and sexual aspects of the original story (which are included in the 1970s remake), and I'm might be mistaken (it's been a while since I read it), but the Anne Shirley character appears to have been created as a potential love interest for Dick Powell. She seems to have been inspired by a similar character in 'Double Indemnity' (written by James M. Cain and filmed the same year with the help of Chandler). Dick Powell was originally a crooner and casting him as Philip Marlowe was a very strange choice at the time, but it certainly works. Personally I would have preferred to see Robert Mitchum playing Marlowe in this version, but by the 1970s he was too old for the part, and comparing the two versions Powell definitely wins. Claire Trevor is also excellent as one of the definitive noir femme fatales, and her scenes with Powell are compelling. The drug sequence is also very memorable. 'Murder, My Sweet' is one of the most entertaining detective thrillers ever made, and along with 'Double Indemnity' and 'Out Of The Past' one of the very best crime movies of the 1940s.

The hard-boiled dialog flies faster here than eggs at Easter. Then too, practically every line out of Marlowe's (Powell) mouth is a cynical figure of speech, making the 90-minutes one of the more corrosive in the private eye canon. No need to recap the plot since I couldn't, anyway. There're so many twists and turns on who did what to whom, you may need to call in the proverbial rocket scientist. But then, I think writer Chandler said something about reality being a lot messier than usual detective fiction. Judging from this, he wasn't kidding.

Speaking of messy, catch the great Esther Howard as old lady Florian. No one was better at sloppy slatterns than the be-robed Howard, and when she says "no peeking" to Marlowe as her robe flops open, I'll bet a wave of shudders swept across theatres everywhere. At the same time, ex-song and dance man Powell shows he could do hard cases with the best of them, that is, when he wasn't jumping helplessly into another 'black pool'. And who knew hulking thug Mazurki could go from lion to lamb so quickly. It's really he who gives the film a heart.

There's some great photography and art direction from RKO's expert production team. No wonder that studio became the one of record for post-war noir. In fact, this 1944 effort signals the emerging era of noir, bringing together the private eye and a chaotic world of shadows, as it does. I especially like those final beach house scenes, perched precariously beside a dark sea of eternity.

Anyway, the movie's a fine piece of private eye noir; just don't try to figure out the plot, which is incidental, anyhow.

This is considered one of the classic film noirs ever made and some think THE film noir. In recognizing that before I had seen it, perhaps I was disappointed because I expected more.

What I found was a very confusing film, at least in the last third of the movie as everything started to be explained. It almost got ridiculous in the last 10 minutes when Dick Powell ("Philip Marlowe") explained the whole story. He talked too fast and it was next to impossible to follow. I guess I will have to view this more often to understand it better, or find someone who can explain it for my feeble brain.

The best part of the film was the cinematography, which really comes to life on the DVD. Someone did a very nice job restoring this film. That, and the general dialog by Powell, were fascinating. You could make a short book with all the wise-guy remarks made by "Marlowe" in this film - a lot of great stuff. I just wish they had made a simpler story and made it easier for the viewer to digest all the facts at the end.

This is the movie that hooked me on "Film Noir." I first saw this on the late show while suffering a killer flu. Even through local TV editing and enough medicine to tranquilize a circus tent, it had me sitting at attention from start to finish. It wasn't until several years later that I got to see it uncut on cable that I got the full effect. Having grown up with Bogart's hard-boiled private eye archetype, Dick Powell was a complete revelation to me. If you double-bill this with Bogart's "Big Sleep," you see at once that Powell truly IS Phillip Marlowe (even Raymond Chandler thought so), and Bogart is much better suited to portray Hammet's colder, meaner Sam Spade. Powell gives Marlowe a vulnerable cynicism as well as a touch of the "everyman," that Bogart wouldn't be able to pull off until later in his career. Powell's background in romantic musicals gives him access to a far deeper emotional range, needed to play the complex and conflicted Marlowe; his cynicism, his humour, his loyalty to his code...it's all there. Powell manages to give extra resonance to some of Chandler's throw-away similes! No wonder he claimed this as his favorite role!

The direction by Edward Dmytryk and cinematography by Harry Wild are perfect, giving the film a tight, economical yet alluring vintage "feel". Working on a tight budget, they manage to infuse it with all the seedy, chaotic topography that would serve as the touchstones for every film of this type from "Night of the Hunter" to "Blade Runner." While this isn't the first Noir film, it may well be the best.