Starring: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Otto Kruger, Mike Mazurki Directed By: Edward Dmytryk Average Rating: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Binding: DVD Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC Label: RKO Radio Pictures Number of Items: 1 Region Code: 1 Release Date: July 06, 2004 Running Time: 95 minutes Theatrical Release Date: December 09, 1944
Amazon.com: Dick Powell will forever be known as a 1930s crooner in archetypal musical comedies, but this career-changing role shows Powell at his best and remains perhaps the most faithful cinematic representation of Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled hero, Philip Marlowe, ever put on screen. In this adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely, Powell's cynical, smart-talking private eye is hired by a dim ex-con (pug-nosed Mike Mazurki) to find his girl Velma, and by the prissy stooge of a blackmail victim to babysit him during a handoff. The meeting ends with the stooge's death, and Marlowe is immediately engaged by the owner of some jewels, the wily Mrs. Grayle (Claire Trevor), to recover them. As Marlowe navigates the dark, dangerous world of wartime L.A., splitting his search between high-society haunts and the cheap, smoky bars and flophouses of the inner city, he turns up one too many stones, winds up on the wrong end of a fist, and wakes up to a drug-induced nightmare that director Edward Dmytryk delivers with a mixture of surreal symbolism and sinister expressionism. Powell delivers screenwriter John Paxton's snappy lines and droll asides with hard-boiled cynicism, like someone not quite as tough as he talks; but it's Powell's innate vulnerability that makes this reluctant saint of the city so compelling. Dmytryk's shadowy style creates a visual equivalent to the web of intrigue Marlowe navigates, an almost perpetual world of night. One of the first great films noir and an often-overlooked detective-movie classic. --Sean Axmaker
"You shouldn't kiss a girl when you're wearing that gun... leaves a bruise" Filled with tart one-liners and sharp performances, MURDER, MY SWEET (aka "Farewell, My Lovely") is a good example of just how sublime film noir could be with the RKO Studios. Most people tend to regard Warner Brothers as the house of choice when it came to noir, but RKO cranked out some real doozies, too.
Dick Powell forever shed his wholesome, goody-goody image when he played hard-boiled Detective Philip Marlowe. Hired to track down the ex-wife of nutty stand-over man Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki), Marlowe's trail later leads him into an altogether more puzzling case involving a priceless jade necklace, the sultry second wife of a millionaire (Claire Trevor) and her lovely stepdaughter (Anne Shirley).
MURDER, MY SWEET is a complete ride from beginning to end. Although the plot is downright convuluted and confusing, the film is compelling largely because of Powell's performance and the snappy screenplay of John Paxton (based on the original novel by Raymond Chandler).
Audiences would have forever pegged Dick Powell for his tap-happy roles in Busby Berkeley musicals like "42nd Street" had the character of Marlowe not come along and allowed a new side of his incredible acting range to shine through. He's remarkable in this movie. Likewise this film also established radiant ingenue Anne Shirley (from "Anne of Green Gables" and "Stella Dallas") in a sophisticated new light, although her career sadly ended with this film. Claire Trevor, that perennial film noir femme fatale, doesn't disappoint.
Two thumbs up from me!
Noir with an endearing sense of nerdiness. As far as film noir goes, this is it. The contradiction of Raymond Chandler's gritty gumshoe Philip Marlowe comes across at the hands of Dick Powell far more easily than it did with either Bogart or Mitchum (who was in a remake of this film, years later). Powell's performance of the detective is lighter than others, and though he certainly doesn't evoke the feelings of menace that other actors do, I can't imagine anyone but him playing hopscotch with the tiles of a stately home.
Mike Mazurki's turn as Moose Malloy is fabulous - a real-life ex-wrestler turned meathead-for-hire-under-false-pretences. If you want a great strangulation, he's the man.
So why only three stars? As a film this is a beautiful work - the opening shots of a blindfolded Marlowe, appearing as if in front of a firing squad, are gorgeous. There's a lot of expertly-crafted noir stereotypical setups here. But the story seems particularly convoluted, and to not hang together too well. It's forgiveable in a book where your mind fills in the blanks, but on the screen it seems that something is lacking. It definitely helps if you've read Chandler's original before tackling this one.
One thing that could be a spoiler but isn't but sort of is: watch out for the drug scene. It's one of the most breathtakingly good:bad pieces of acting and camerawork I've seen. It's so close to genius and failure at once that its inclusion makes viewing of this film necessary.
Confusing,But Love Those Wiscracks! 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. Yet, I still own this DVD and enjoy watching it about every 4-5 years. Why? Probably the cinematography and "Phillip Marlowe's" dialog.
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 ("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 print for this disc. 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.
Film Noir at its Very Best RKO turned out some of the best film noir drama of the forties and fifties and did it with sound economy, capitalizing on multiple talent working in a coordinated fashion.
"Murder, My Sweet" directed by Edward Dmytryk falls into the above category. John Payton's script adaptation from Raymond Chandler's novel "Farewell, My Lovely" moves at a spellbinding pace as we see the world of detective Philip Marlowe, played by Dick Powell in a dramatic debut after a career as a song and dance man, unfold in Los Angeles. When he meets up with ex-con Moose Malloy, played by veteran pro wrestler and character actor Mike Mazurki, he becomes a marked man.
Powell's nemises are beautiful bad girl Claire Trevor and gang head Otto Kruger while Anne Shirley, as Trevor's stepdaughter, helps the detective find romance while providing him with the lowdown on the wayward blonde, who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
'MY ATTITUDE DOESN'T SEEM TO IMPROVE'
When Dick Powell made this movie his acting career astonishingly was at a very low ebb, but this movie helped revitalize the old song and dance man into a transformed 'noir' actor. He had a lot of help in this movie not only from an excellent script but also from some excellent actors. One of my favorites has always been Claire Trevor, and if she had not been identified, don't know that I would have ever recognized her as this dazzling, coniving blonde of the jade necklace.
Powell is given some very good, wise cracking lines, but underneath he is a teddy bear and that comes through at times, especially with Anne Shirley. One client says he doesn't care for Marlowe's (Powell's role) attitude, with Marlowe replying that he has had complaints about that before, but the attitude doesn't seem to improve. Along the way, and it is a confused way for much of the movie, Marlowe accuses or suspects nearly everyone in the cast, with the police always eyeing Marlowe as a possible suspect. Ring around the rosey, only death intervenes from time-to-time in this game. Everyone seems to have something to hide or some angle they are playing with Marlowe picking up easy money. As he says, some people are paying him to stay with the investigation, while others are paying him to drop the investigation. As many times as he is sapped and knocked out, one would think he would welcome grabbing the money and letting the thing solve itself. But as he says, ethics are involved, his mainly since he was originally hired to body guard a client, with that client turning up dead on Marlowe's watch. It's just another aspect of being a teddy bear underneath it all.
Rich good looking women, sleezy con men and thugs, a stolen jade necklace worth a cool hundred thousand never stolen, and plenty of guns leads to a full fledged Raymond Chandler group of writings brought to the Hollywood screen by RKO. When looking at 'noir' films it just doesn't get much better than this film.
If you haven't seen it you have missed a very good effort in both acting and writing.
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