Blast from the Past(twice over?): Farewell My Lovely

Since Aristotle, it's been a common truism that there are no "original" stories; it's ultimately the given details and style that make a telling special(or not, as the case may be). With this idea in mind,  I've recently given an overview of  the production of several films in the 1970s that consciously (sometimes self-consciously) harkened to popular material from the 40s and 50s. Certain films to spring from the neo-noir craze are regarded as major classics, such as Roman Polanski's Chinatown(1974), but I thought I'd shine the spotlight on a well-made largely forgotten entry. 

The 1944 film noir

The same story, circa 1975

Film noir, that genre of private eyes, treacherous dames, smoky nighttime rooms and corruption in urban America, saw its heyday at the height of the Hollywood studio system, when the Production Code was enforced. As a result, writers and directors had to skirt around the overt depiction of criminal activities, and they did so in often ingenious ways. By the 70s, with the Code retired and the MPAA ratings system brought in to replace it, there was an appetite to revisit the haunts of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Grittier and more upfront in their depiction of vice than their cinematic forebears, these neo-noirs nonetheless reveled in the style of pictures like The Maltese Falcon(1940), Double Indemnity(1944) and The Big Sleep(1945).

Humphrey Bogart, in The Big Sleep

Farewell My Lovely(1975), like The Big Sleep, is an adaptation of a novel by Raymond Chandler, starring his recurrent protagonist Phillip Marlowe, a wise-cracking, hard-drinking private investigator who somehow still nurtures a doggedly moral center. Marlowe had been played onscreen before by Humphrey Bogart and Elliot Gould, and William Powell in Murder, My Sweet, the 1944 adaptation of Farewell My Lovely.In the 1975 Farewell My Lovely, he is played by one of the greatest actors from classic noir, Robert Mitchum. Such a casting choice could easily have been a lazy attempt to phone-in the spirit of screen detectives past, but it is a credit to director Dick Richards and his star that it does not. Mitchum, himself an alcoholic with a penchant for sardonic remarks, seems to infuse these qualities into his performance; his Marlowe has a fine blend of amusement, toughness and unexpected tenderness. Fifty seven years old at the time the film was made, Mitchum grants the character a quality of weariness distinct from other interpretations. His performance is the anchor of the film and the key to raising it above simple homage and into a realized story of its own.

Robert Mitchum in Farewell My Lovely

The plot concerns Marlowe taking on the job of locating the missing girlfriend of gangster Moose Malloy (Jack O’Halloran, appropriately hulking and meaty). The search leads him into the underbelly of 1941 Los Angeles, with the plot becoming more and more tangled the deeper he goes. The characters he encounters offer indelible bits of corruption or decay, though they are none the less gripping for this. The ex-nightclub performer lush played by Sylvia Miles and a very dangerous madam played by Frances Amthor both complicate things for Marlowe, as does a very young, pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone. But the biggest complication just may be Helen Grayle(Charlotte Rampling, recently an Academy Award nominee for 45 Years), the wife of a wealthy man who may or may not be more than she seems. Rampling clearly evokes memories of Lauren Bacall or Barbara Stanwyck with her icy streamlined beauty and barbed witticisms, but she doesn’t suffer by the comparison, if only because her channeling of the femme fatale contributes so effectively to the overall atmosphere. 
Atmosphere is the key word with film noir, and Farewell My Lovely delivers it in spades. John A Alonzo’s cinematography provides rich neon-drenched streets, and David Shire’s music features the lonesome trumpets and sax rhythms a viewer would naturally associate with a film set in 40s Los Angeles. If you're interested in sampling how the flavor of the same story can vary in this most American of genres, serve up a double-bill of Murder, My Sweet and Farewell, My Lovely.

Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling