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The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: Farewell My Lovely (1975) Run Time: 1H 35M

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Welcome gentle readers to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today we have a Phillip Marlowe story for you: Farewell My Lovely. It stars Robert Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling.

Reviews:

RogerEbert.com says:

It is, indeed, the most evocative of all the private detective movies we have had in the last few years. It is not as great as Roman Polanski’s “Chinatown,” which was concerned with larger subjects, but in the genre itself there hasn’t been anything this good since Hollywood was doing Philip Marlowe the first time around. One reason is that Dick Richards, the director, takes his material and character absolutely seriously. He is not uneasy with it, as Robert Altman was when he had Elliot Gould flirt with seriousness in “The Long Goodbye:” Richards doesn’t hedge his bet.

And neither does Robert Mitchum, in what becomes his definitive performance. Mitchum is one of the great screen presences, and at 57 he seems somehow to be just now coming of age: He was born to play the weary, cynical, doggedly romantic Marlowe. His voice and his face and the way he lights his cigaret(sic) are all exactly right, and seem totally effortless. That’s his trademark. In a good Mitchum performance, we are never aware he is acting. And it is only when we measure the distances between his characters that we can see what he is doing.

The Guardian says:

Raymond Chandler’s second Philip Marlowe novel has been filmed three times: first in disguise as the 1942 B-movie The Falcon Takes Over, next as the excellent noir thriller Murder My Sweet (1944) starring Dick Powell, and third as this elegant neo-noir with a perfectly cast Robert Mitchum, at 58 the oldest actor to play Marlowe. It appeared during a period of nostalgia for the interwar years (along with The Great Gatsby, The Sting, The Way We Were, Chinatown) and is set in 1941 during the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. To a bluesy score by David Shire, Marlowe goes down the mean streets of a Los Angeles lit by John A Alonzo to resemble paintings by Edward Hopper. He’s searching for Velma, the missing moll of gangster Moose Malloy, and following Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak for the Yankees. He’s a weary figure, aware that his chivalric values are becoming unfashionable in a changing world. Character takes precedence over suspense in this elegiac movie.

Classic Movie Reviews says:

In the novel “Farewell, My Lovely” 1940 by Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe was 30-something. When this film was made, Robert Mitchum was 57. It has been reported that many people thought that Mitchum was too old and out of shape for this role. Film critic Gene Siskel wrote that Mitchum “plays Marlowe with a delicious ease. He sounds just like Marlowe should sound.” I have to say, after watching this again, Mitchum knocked it out of the park.

Mitchum said that producer Elliott Kastner wanted Richard Burton for the role of Marlowe. This would have been a crime against moviedom.

I really enjoyed this movie. I am getting into Mitchum, expect some more of his movies in the future. He is perfect as the jaded, weary Phillip Marlowe. I don’t understand how anyone could think he was too old for the part; his mature, granite-like features are perfect.

This was my first experience with Charlotte Rampling. Wow. She is luminescent, she has an almost supernatural beauty. Five stars for the movie overall.

Director: Dick Richards

Notable Actors: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, Harry Dean Stanton, Sylvester Stallone

Plot (Spoilers!):

Private investigator Philip Marlowe (Mitchum) is tasked to search for Velma, the lost love of “Moose” Malloy. Malloy, a bank robber, has recently been released from a seven year stint in prison. Following a lead, Marlowe finds the woman in an insane asylum outside of LA but is surprised to learn that his lead was false, it’s not the right woman. Malloy, having murdered a night club owner in an unrelated incident, has gone to ground.

In the middle of his search, Marlowe is hired to accompany a man who is to rendezvous with some jewelry thieves and pay them a ransom for an expensive necklace. The man, Marriot, want’s Marlowe around as security. The exchange goes south, though, Marlowe is knocked unconscious and awakens to find the police on the scene and Marriot shot dead. Marlowe is brought in for questioning and is told that Malloy has fled the city. The cops tell Marlowe is to cease his search for Velma. Marlowe moves on to investigating the death of Marriot.

A lead leads him to the home of Baxter Grayle, a powerful man in LA politics. There he meets Helen, Grayle’s wife, who was a friend of Marriot. Helen hires Marlowe to find out who killed Marriot. When he returns to his office, Marlowe is knocked out and taken to a brothel where the madam questions him about the location of Moose. A struggle ensues and Marlowe is drugged and left locked in a room. When someone comes to check on him, Marlowe overpowers the man and escapes to confront the madam. Unsuccessful in his attempts to wrest information from her, Marlowe flees the brothel when an underling murders the madam.

Helen reaches out to Marlowe and invites him to a posh party. At the party, Marlowe is approached by a powerful criminal Brunette who, along with everyone else, wants to know where Moose is and is willing to pay well for the information. A former friend of Velma’s tells Marlowe that Velma wants to meet with Malloy and arrangements are made. It turns out to be an ambush.

Things start to come together for Marlowe and he tells the cops that Brunette knows what is really going on. Moose and Marlowe make there way to Brunette’s boat to confront him. Helen is there and it turns out she is Velma. She has been conspiring with Brunette to protect her identity. Velma shoots the entranced Malloy and Marlowe kills her in turn. The cops show up and Marlowe leaves, even more tired and jaded than he was before.

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23 comments

  1. Matthew Kopka

    If you don’t know The Friends of Eddie Coyle, also starring Mitchum, run don’t walk. Probably my favorite movie. Novel is also sparsely brilliant.

    Thank you for this; will watch tonight.

    2. semper loquitur Post author

      You’re welcome. And Coyle is in the queue. It’s a terrific, compact crime drama.

  2. The Rev Kev

    Damn, man. Now I am intrigued. I must have missed this movie when it came out so it will be interesting to watch. Looked up a brief clip on YouTube to see gangsters and tommy guns. How can you lose? And having a very young Charlotte Rampling is certainly a bonus. I looked up her career and it looks like it could be a movie in itself-

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Rampling

    1. Carolinian

      She is still around in Dune 1 and 2 (and there will be a 3).

      Can’t remember whether I’ve seen the above or not–probably have.

  3. ambrit

    Alright there, I had not heard of “The Falcon Takes Over.” Being a fan of Hollywood ‘B’ movies in general. now I have an obscurity to look up. I wonder how actor George Sanders plays the part of Marlowe. The contrast between the three versions will be educational. Chandler was taking an essentially “pulp” genre and elevating it. This perfectly transitions to the later Lew Archer stories by Ross Macdonald. The two outings featuring Archer, “The Moving Target” 1966 and “The Drowning Pool” 1975, for some inexplicable reason called Harper in the films, played by Paul Newman, are also worth watching.
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_(film)
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drowning_Pool_(film)
    Pass the popcorn.

    1. Michaelmas

      But above and beyond all other Mitchum films and directed by Charles Laughton (his only directorial effort):

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_of_the_Hunter_(film)

      French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma selected The Night of the Hunter in 2008 as the second-best film of all time, behind Citizen Kane. The director of photography was Stanley Cortez, who also shot Orson Welles’ 1942 film The Magnificent Ambersons, and Hunter is in the same sharply textured b&w as Kane and Amberson.

      And this is the one, of course, where Mitchum plays the psychopathic Preacher with LOVE tattooed on on one set of knuckles and HATE on the other.

      1. Lee

        I was pretty young when I had the harrowing experience of watching Night of the Hunter. Mitchum was similarly creepy-scary in Cape Fear.

      2. JustAnotherVolunteer

        The Preacher goes up against Lillian Gish and doesn’t fare well. Old lady in the rocking chair had game.

  5. doug

    Bob Mitchum in ‘Thunder Road’ is my favorite. Bonus, his son tries to act in this one. All about moonshining.

  6. David in Friday Harbor

    Farewell My Lovely is one of my favorite films. It was made at a time when directors were finally getting the budget to do proper period set-dressing and costumes, which are a big part of the “vibe” that ex-advertising photographer Dick Richards was able to create. Mitchum may have been 20 years older than Chandler wrote Marlow, but he was a man of the times portrayed by the film and he knew how to inhabit that place in time. And that David Shire score! Perfection.

  7. .Tom

    I can’t get behind 1970s Mitchum as Philip Marlowe in this or The Big Sleep.

    Updating these novels is tricky in any case for a lot of reasons but most of all because Chandler’s Marlowe has this overwhelming insistence on propriety that just doesn’t have any place in the 1970s.

    Robert Altman together with Leigh Brackett and Elliott Gould solved that problem brilliantly in their version of The Long Goodbye by having Marlowe awake from a 20-year Rip Van Winkle and act confused and out of place and time until near the climax, but they had to turn the story on its head to accomplish this. First time I saw it I was angry at the inversion but I changed my mind about it.

    That Gould is my favorite film Marlowe. Bogart is too Bogart. But perhaps the worst was the 1947 PoV version of Lady in the Lake with Robert Montgomery.

    1. semper loquitur Post author

      I’ll have to see if I can find some Gould, thanks for the reference.

  8. Elijah SR

    I haven’t seen any noir from this era, this is top notch. I’m so grateful for these Sunday movie recommendations!

  9. Martin Oline

    Thanks for the link. I had stared watching this a couple weeks ago but stopped about 70% of the way through. I had read the book long ago and seen an earlier treatment. I remember at the time this was released it didn’t get that great of reviews so I hadn’t bothered to see it.
    What drew me to it was I had watched Midnight Cowboy again a month ago. Then I saw a “Making of Midnight Cowboy” on Ewe Tube. They spoke about how lucky they were to get Sylvia Miles to play the role of an early customer of Jon Voight who ends up taking him for money instead. Sylvia is in this movie. She played the part of the alcoholic Mrs. Florian, who provides Marlow with a lead and later dies. Thanks again, it didn’t take long to forward to the rest of the story.
    When I lived in California I often went to see old noir films in the many theaters about town. I think one of the better movies I saw on the big screen was The Big Heat, made in 1953, the year I was born. It starred Glen Ford, Gloria Graham (whew), and Lee Marvin, who puts the hood in hoodlum. Movies like this caused Hollywood to clean up its act. I don’t know if it is on the internet, but the preview is here.

  11. John Anthony La Pietra

    I have a small film with a pretty big actor to suggest: “The Flim Flam Man”, starring George C. Scott in the title role and Michael Sarrazin (his film debut) as his chance-met partner in small-con crime. Lots of other good people in supporting roles, and a score by Jerry Goldsmith which may quietly outshine all these characters if it weren’t so clearly comfortable hanging out with them.

    video:
    https://archive.org/details/the-flim-flam-man-1967

    more info:
    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0061678/

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