Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Farewell, My Lovely (1975) – D. Richards

This third version of Chandler’s 1940 novel stars Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe, private detective, hired by Moose Malloy to find his lost love, Velma, who stopped keeping in touch while he spent 6 years in the can.  Although the Marlowe of the book is in his 30s, Mitchum was 59 and plays the character as world-weary – which is quite a contrast to the 1944 version starring Dick Powell (called Murder, My Sweet to avoid audiences thinking it was a musical, Powell’s original forté) where Marlowe is portrayed as a bit more full of zing, although still sardonic and cynical about human nature. I’ve practically memorised the 1944 noir, so I started to note the changes in this later version – until there were a bit too many (Florian’s is an African American establishment now, Amthor is a madame in a house of ill-repute, etc.). Later, I checked the book to confirm that although some of the changes made the ’75 film truer to Chandler, the majority did not and the ’44 film remains a more faithful rendition.  The plot is, as usual, complicated – Marlowe gets tricked into chasing the wrong Velma, kidnapped and held prisoner (all drugged up), and pursued by the law for murders that he did not commit. Young Charlotte Rampling has a brief turn as Velma. All told, this is a rather ordinary outing that feels like a made-for-TV movie with that awkward 70s doing the 30s falseness that rings hollow throughout (despite the presence of a genuine film noir star in the lead). Probably OK if you haven’t seen the superior 1944 film.