Murder, My Sweet based on the novel by Raymond Chandler. Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. The film is from 1944, but I feel certain that para would say this is not Film Noir, just a detective story. I don’t remember ever reading Chandler. I assume much of the movie dialogue is right out of his novel. As the thread title should illustrate, much of it pretty silly. The full line is, “The only reason I took the job was because my bank account was trying to crawl under a duck.” Still, a pretty good murder mystery and I was glad I watched it. Anybody, besides para, seen this one?

I don't remember seeing the movie, but I was hooked on Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald books a few years ago. Wonder if I still have them buried somewhere? As I remember it, Chandler was a master of the phrase, like the one you quote, while Macdonald did action better.

Powell shed his song and dance man typecast to play Marlowe and did a great job. Mike Mazurki as Moose was excellent, too.

quote:

Originally posted by YooperSigs:
Powell shed his song and dance man typecast to play Marlowe and did a great job. Mike Mazurki as Moose was excellent, too.

Yes to both

Velma!!

I've seen it many, many times and still love it.

Best lines?

“I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”

or...

"I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet, I dived in, it had no bottom. I felt pretty good...like an amputated leg."

I know a lot of Chandler fans complain that Edward Dmytryk made Marlowe into more of a 'passive' version of the one that appears in the books, but I disagree. Many grittier elements of other Marlowe stories were left out of even later films, so as to sanitize the stories for the theater standards of the time (Howard Hawks certainly didn't film the scene where Carmen Sternwood nude in Marlowe's bed and Bogart ripping the sheets off after throwing her out). Besides, taken in context, this was the very first big film portrayal of Philip Marlowe...Bogart's version didn't come out until two years later, in 1946. I think the comparisons to the later portrayals are a bit unfair, since Dick Powell was having to invent the first film version as they went along...every subsequent other actor had a catalog of cinematic images to refer to.

Even if the story got substantially changed from the book (when does that *not* happen?), it is still a stand out from the golden age of film noir...