Movie Type: Post-Noir (Modern Noir), Detective Film
Themes: Private Eyes, Star Detectives, Femmes Fatales
Main Cast: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles, Jack O'Halloran
Release Year: 1975
Country: US
Run Time: 97 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Previously filmed in 1942 as The Falcon Takes Over and in 1944 as Murder, My Sweet, Raymond Chandler's Farewell My Lovely was given its third cinematic go-round under its original title in 1975. Spouting the Chandlerish prose as if it were second nature, Robert Mitchum stars as 1940s private eye Philip Marlowe, hired by the goonish Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran) to locate his former girl friend. This involves Marlowe in the theft of a jade necklace, which in turn leads to murder. All roads seemingly lead to adventuress Mrs. Grayle (Charlotte Rampling), wealthily married but far from satisfied. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
Soaked in period detail, the third remake of Raymond Chandler's eponymous novel is fascinating to look at if a mite leisurely in pacing. Gumshoe Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is hired by mountainous criminal Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran) to find a former girlfriend. Raymond Chandler had many qualities as a writer but reverence was hardly one of them. Thus, the reverence for the period, manifest in the impressively detailed art direction, seems strangely out of place for a writer whose tone of cynical romanticism often expressed contempt for the Los Angeles of the '30s and '40s, the time and place of which he wrote. The film has retained his romanticism but muted his biting wit, and in casting the laconic, aging Mitchum to play the younger, highly verbal detective, and insisting on a halting pace, it casts its lot with nostalgia rather than excitement. But, if less well-made than the previous version, Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet (1944), the film has its pleasures, among them the iconographic performance of Mitchum, the wonderful camerawork of John Alonzo, and the brooding score of David Shire. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Anthony Zerbe - Brunette; Harry Dean Stanton - Billy Rolfe; Jim Thompson - Mr. Grayle; John O'Leary - Marriott; Kate Murtagh - Amthor; Walter McGinn - Tommy Ray; Jimmy Archer - Georgie; Joe Spinell - Nick; Sylvester Stallone - Kelly/Jonnie; Burton Gilliam - Cowboy; Mark Allen - Detective; Jack Bernardi - Louis Levine; Wally K. Berns - Father; Harry Caesar - Bartender; Jerry Fujikawa - Fence; Eddra Gale - Singer; Ted Gehring - Roy; Stu Gilliam - 1st Man; Richard Kennedy - 1st Detective; Lola Mason - Mother; Noelle North - Girl; Bennett Ohta - Patron in Pool Hall; Logan Ramsey - Commissioner; Joan Shawlee - Woman in Ballroom; Cheryl Smith - Doris; Dino Washington - Bouncer; Napoleon Whiting - Hotel Clerk; Andrew Harris - Mulatto Child; John O'Neill
Credit
Angelo P. Graham - Art Director, Louis Di Giaimo - Casting, Tony Scarano - Costume Designer, David Sosna - First Assistant Director, Dick Richards - Director, Joel Cox - Editor, Walter Thompson - Editor, Elliott Kastner - Executive Producer, Jerry Bick - Executive Producer, David Shire - Composer (Music Score), Frank Westmore - Makeup, Dean Tavoularis - Production Designer, John A. Alonzo - Cinematographer, Jerry Bruckheimer - Producer, Georges Pappas - Producer, Bob Nelson - Set Designer, Charles Gaspar - Special Effects, Tom Overton - Sound/Sound Designer, David Zelag Goodman - Screenwriter, Raymond Chandler - Book Author
Set in Los Angeles in 1941, against a seamy backdrop of police corruption, cheap hotel rooms, illegal gambling and jewel trafficking, private detective Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is holed up in a hotel room and growing more weary by the hour. As he explains to his police lieutenant friend Nulty (John Ireland): "I've got a hat, a coat and a gun, that's it."
Marlowe has been asked by a huge and surly ex-convict, Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran), to find his old girlfriend Velma, a dancer and part-time prostitute. At the same time, Marlowe is investigating the murder of a man who was a victim of blackmail and a stolen necklace made of jade.
While encountering connections to both cases, Marlowe also develops an attraction to the married but seductive Helen Grayle (Charlotte Rampling). As the body count mounts, Marlowe survives numerous attempts on his life which include being drugged and held captive by a psychotic madam. The action comes to a head with a shootout on a gambling boat off the L.A. coast.
