Farewell, My Lovely

Farwell My Lovely is much closer to the novel than the other previous adaptation Murder My Sweet from the 40's. This film is also a better film, but it has some flaws and seems like it was just made a decade too late. For starters let's talk Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's anti-hero. I liked Bogart's Marlowe a whole lot and find his portrayal my favorite, yet Mitchum does a very credible even superior job as the private eye working within his own code of ethics. He says the narration lines wonderfully and he looks 1940's. He, if the lighting is really good which fortunately for him isn't too terribly often, looks a little worse for wear at times, but I believe he carries the role off both in spirit and physicality. The rest of the cast is equally good with some spot-on character acting from the likes of John Ireland, Anthony Zerbe, and Sylvia Miles giving a really good performance as a lush and one time lounge singer. The story, like much of Chandler's work,is surprisingly complex as Marlowe is brought into the case of a missing girlfriend of an ex-con and another case of abducted jade jewelry - both cases melding together and bringing about a rather astounding conclusion. Director Dick Richards conveys the atmosphere of the time period impeccably. Farewell My Lovely is a solid mystery with a chance to see some first-rate acting by an American screen legend Robert Mitchum.

This re-make of Raymond Chandler's work has the edge on the 1944 film. Robert Mitchum's face fits the film perfectly. His ageing hard boiled-looking features look like a relief map of the Rocky Mountains! In this movie Mitchum was as good he has ever been. He got better as he got older. What I also liked was the haunting but soulful musical score, at the beginning and at the end.

In the closing scene an atmosphere of rising crisis that seems to hang in the air; created by the soulful musical score. Marlow with the case all wrapped up and himself at a loose end; in the amusement centre playing the machines, picks up a discarded newspaper with "Tokyo" in bold print as the front page headline. Was this the late hours of the 6th of December in Los Angeles? A sailor and his girl, and a soldier in the background makes it seem so. Both the sailor and the soldier, and the whole of America blissfully unaware, that a Japanese armada has shaped a easterly course

across the North Pacific. That scene coupled with the soulful musical score is like a forlorn-sounding and doom-laden overture to what is about to happen with surprising and devastating suddenness on the following but quiet Sunday morning in Hawaii. It is not surprising that one of the songs is titled, "Sunday".

When Dick Powell did his version of this Raymond Chandler classic Philip Marlowe story, he and RKO were laboring under the handicap of the motion picture code. Certain things like prostitution and homosexuality were simply not talked about in those times. Still with the changes that had to be made in the plot a really great version was done and it changed the career of Dick Powell forever.

Now back in those days, Robert Mitchum was getting started and would soon be doing many a noir film for RKO himself. In getting him for this version under the original title of Farewell My Lovely the producers certainly got themselves someone with whom the Philip Marlowe character fit like a glove.

Even with color, this version is remarkably evocative of the Forties style noir film. Charlotte Rampling steps nicely into the well trod path of people like Lauren Bacall and Lizabeth Scott.

For those who don't know the barebones of the story, Philip Marlowe is hired to find Velma Valento by her old gangster boy friend, a giant of a man named Moose Malloy who just finished doing a stretch in prison. Later on a man named Lindsay Marriott hires him to as a bodyguard and he's killed. The two cases are related and the how and why is what moves the plot.

John Ireland another forties veteran of many a noir film plays police lieutenant Nulty and my favorite in the film is Sylvia Miles who is the luckless dipsomaniacal Mrs. Florian.

I do marvel when I see this film at how well the spirit of the forties was captured in this film. Turn off the color on your set and its just like watching a great noir flick from that decade.

This version of Raymond Chandler's classic detective novel is more faithful to the original book than the 1940s version filmed as 'Murder, My Sweet', and includes some of the racial and sexual aspects that weren't able to be included earlier. However despite being more faithful for me it still isn't as entertaining. And Robert Mitchum in his prime could act Dick Powell off the screen, but unfortunately as good as Mitchum is in this movie it's about twenty years too late for him to play Philip Marlowe. If Mitchum had starred in 'Murder, My Sweet' it would might have been THE definitive 1940s Noir, but comparing the two versions as they stand, Powell beats Mitchum hands down. Even so, there is a lot going for 'Farewell, My Lovely' and it is quite an underrated movie. Mitchum may be too old but he is still compelling, and the supporting cast is first rate, and includes veteran character actor John Ireland, Charlotte Rampling ('Zardoz'), Harry Dean Stanton ('Repo Man'), Sylvia Miles ('Midnight Cowboy'), Anthony Zerbe ('The Omega Man'), a pre-'Rocky' Sly Stallone, Joe Spinell ('Maniac') , Rainbeaux Smith ('Caged Heat') and even pulp fiction legend Jim Thompson. If you MUST choose between the two versions I'd go for 'Murder, My Sweet', but 'Farewell, My Lovely' is still a very good movie. Watch them both, they make a hell of an interesting double bill!

The choice of Mitchum for the lead role really did work. The novel suggest a tired Marlowe, who has had enough of being "detective to the stars". He wants to get out of his seedy little life, and change things, but instead, he gets wrapped up in another case. Mitchum's hang dog expression and tired wise guy act sums up the depression of the fallen hero. This is not the smooth talking Bogart, not the finely clipped and smooth Powell, but a harder, more experienced Marlowe, a man more aware of his own downfall. As he says to knulty, what he need is a nights sleep, what he needs is another drink. After watching this truly excellent recreation of late forties LA, I'm not sure that I couldn't agree with him.

Ah yes, and Charlotte Rampling and the sometime Thelma really was "cuter than lace pants"