WARNING: REVIEW CONTAINS SLIGHT SPOILERS
If a film buff were to select the ideal parameters for a "hardboiled" detective movie, then those requirements would doubtlessly include black and white noir loving splayed over Humphrey Bogart.
The role of Philip Marlowe (and whoever heard of a tough-guy called "Philip"?) has been played by eight actors (James Kirkwood, Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, George Montgomery, Robert Montgomery, James Garner, Elliot Gould and Mitchum) in cinema alone.
Robert Mitchum (best known for the films "Night of the Hunter", "Ryan's Daughter" and "Cape Fear") is the "dick" here, and was reasonably successful so as to warrant a sequel three years later. The fact that 1978's "The Big Sleep" was a remake of an accepted classic shouldn't have been a problem as they were over thirty years apart. The image of Michael Winner saying "I'm going to write and direct it" should have put the fear of God into someone, however. It's notable that while television series have since been erected around the character of Marlowe, there have been no film adaptations since Winner got his hands on it. More of a case of "Farewell, My Luvvie".
But back to Farewell, My Lovely, itself an update of 1934's "Murder, My Sweet". Mitchum gives us an aged, softened, disillusioned Marlowe who is in turns world-wearily engaging, other times just plain bored. For about 50% of the time he sounds like he's saying his lines reading from the script. The fact that he plays the role without irony means that some of the authentic Chandler lines ("This phone kept ringing... it was driving me nuts. I prayed someone would answer it... I didn't realise it was ringing inside my head") sound unintentionally funny. Also pure cheese is a hallucination scene where he's force-injected with drugs.
However, many of the performances are equally below par, so this may be the fault of the director, Dick Richards. Sylvester Stallone ironically appears in a non-speaking bit part, but was to go on to grander things the very next year. His burgeoning career from this point would eclipse Mitchum's dying one. Also rating high on the lame-o-meter is some big ugly bloke who looked the spitting image of "Jaws" from the James Bond movies but on closer inspection turns out to be "Non" from the brilliant Superman II. No wonder they didn't give him any lines in that one.
The most disconcerting element of the film is the concept: a 40s detective thriller made in the mid-seventies. It does have the same cinematographer as "Chinatown", so there's a connection, but even so it's a strange undertaking. It isn't bad, and the noir elements are built up by drowning out the colour. It's also updated, with mild bad language, some violence, and sexual tone. Whether it's a 15-year-old girl punching Mitchum in the scallops, Charlotte Rampling coming on to him, or shots of bare breasts in a brothel, this is certainly a few stages apart from the relatively-wholesome Bogart movies.
It is ultimately lacking, particularly in the incidental music side of things - the jazz pieces go well, though the sleazy saxophone at the beginning and end sounds too much like cliché. A great deal of the film goes by without music of any kind, and a rip-roaring finale is rendered flat by having the police raid a boat and go charging through it noiselessly. Their little feet go pitter-patter through a soundless boat in an "exciting" shoot-out finale. Any other director would have dubbed over heavier footsteps and a bit of incidental; Ronald Emmerich would probably have made their footsteps thunderstrikes and had the whole of the Welsh Coldstream Guard playing under them; but if you see this section of the film you'll know what I mean.
Another flaw is that Marlowe tells almost the entire movie in flashback. Therefore when we see him being beaten or shot at, there's no tension as we know he's still alive. There are no great weaknesses in the movie, nothing to say it's inordinately bad. Farewell, My Lovely is a good film, and I did award it a "6". The disappointment comes not from thinking it's a bad film, but that it could so easily have been a great one.
If a film buff were to select the ideal parameters for a "hardboiled" detective movie, then those requirements would doubtlessly include black and white noir loving splayed over Humphrey Bogart.
The role of Philip Marlowe (and whoever heard of a tough-guy called "Philip"?) has been played by eight actors (James Kirkwood, Dick Powell, Humphrey Bogart, George Montgomery, Robert Montgomery, James Garner, Elliot Gould and Mitchum) in cinema alone.
Robert Mitchum (best known for the films "Night of the Hunter", "Ryan's Daughter" and "Cape Fear") is the "dick" here, and was reasonably successful so as to warrant a sequel three years later. The fact that 1978's "The Big Sleep" was a remake of an accepted classic shouldn't have been a problem as they were over thirty years apart. The image of Michael Winner saying "I'm going to write and direct it" should have put the fear of God into someone, however. It's notable that while television series have since been erected around the character of Marlowe, there have been no film adaptations since Winner got his hands on it. More of a case of "Farewell, My Luvvie".
But back to Farewell, My Lovely, itself an update of 1934's "Murder, My Sweet". Mitchum gives us an aged, softened, disillusioned Marlowe who is in turns world-wearily engaging, other times just plain bored. For about 50% of the time he sounds like he's saying his lines reading from the script. The fact that he plays the role without irony means that some of the authentic Chandler lines ("This phone kept ringing... it was driving me nuts. I prayed someone would answer it... I didn't realise it was ringing inside my head") sound unintentionally funny. Also pure cheese is a hallucination scene where he's force-injected with drugs.
However, many of the performances are equally below par, so this may be the fault of the director, Dick Richards. Sylvester Stallone ironically appears in a non-speaking bit part, but was to go on to grander things the very next year. His burgeoning career from this point would eclipse Mitchum's dying one. Also rating high on the lame-o-meter is some big ugly bloke who looked the spitting image of "Jaws" from the James Bond movies but on closer inspection turns out to be "Non" from the brilliant Superman II. No wonder they didn't give him any lines in that one.
The most disconcerting element of the film is the concept: a 40s detective thriller made in the mid-seventies. It does have the same cinematographer as "Chinatown", so there's a connection, but even so it's a strange undertaking. It isn't bad, and the noir elements are built up by drowning out the colour. It's also updated, with mild bad language, some violence, and sexual tone. Whether it's a 15-year-old girl punching Mitchum in the scallops, Charlotte Rampling coming on to him, or shots of bare breasts in a brothel, this is certainly a few stages apart from the relatively-wholesome Bogart movies.
It is ultimately lacking, particularly in the incidental music side of things - the jazz pieces go well, though the sleazy saxophone at the beginning and end sounds too much like cliché. A great deal of the film goes by without music of any kind, and a rip-roaring finale is rendered flat by having the police raid a boat and go charging through it noiselessly. Their little feet go pitter-patter through a soundless boat in an "exciting" shoot-out finale. Any other director would have dubbed over heavier footsteps and a bit of incidental; Ronald Emmerich would probably have made their footsteps thunderstrikes and had the whole of the Welsh Coldstream Guard playing under them; but if you see this section of the film you'll know what I mean.
Another flaw is that Marlowe tells almost the entire movie in flashback. Therefore when we see him being beaten or shot at, there's no tension as we know he's still alive. There are no great weaknesses in the movie, nothing to say it's inordinately bad. Farewell, My Lovely is a good film, and I did award it a "6". The disappointment comes not from thinking it's a bad film, but that it could so easily have been a great one.