US 95m Dir: Edward Dmytryk Key Cast: Dick Powell
Based on: Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler (Novel)
Dick Powell was known as an actor that did musicals like 42nd Street and Footlight Parade but his career was completely re-invented when he became the first actor to play Raymond Chandler's private detective Philip Marlowe on screen.
In typical film noir style, Marlowe narrates a story. Various cases connect as Marlowe is hired to locate an ex-con's former girlfriend and to serve as a bodyguard for someone paying a ransom. Marlowe is violently attacked by a range of people, there are several murders and no-one is to be trusted.
All of the ingredients of film noir are here from the film being narrated to the detective with complicated morals and the femme fatales. I think this does suffer from the plot being unnecessarily complicated though perhaps that's an issue with the adaptation- I could see how this could work over a longer period of time in a novel but condensing it all down to 95 minutes does mean it whizzes through the many characters and their different motivations rather quickly.
The dialogue in this film is superb and that's mainly because this was adapted very closely from the Chandler novel. It's the narration which is most effective with Powell serving a perfect storyteller. He describes falling unconscious as a black pool opening at his feet and diving in. There's a real poetry in the in the dialogue, albeit always in a dark way.
I have to talk about the one dream sequence when Marlowe is drugged which is just superb. These film noir films don't usually require anything especially advanced in terms of direction beyond some atmospheric lighting but the drug trip is really well done, cleverly layering multiple images on top of each other. It's a really good piece of 'special effects' for the day.
There were a few details from the novel that were changed, most interestingly a plot thread about a fleet of gambling boats off the LA coast. This was because such a fleet run by mobster Anthony Cornero, aka 'Tony the Hat', did actually exist and happily hosted many important people from Hollywood. The filmmakers didn't want to draw attention to him though whether that was due to fear or the desire to continue visiting the boats isn't recorded.
A really atmospheric film with some strong performances and excellent direction.
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