7/10
The film certainly marked an astonishing transformation in its star...
23 April 2005
There were many attempts to recreate on the screen Raymond Chandler's immortal character, Philip Marlowe, and probably the first serious effort was in 1944, with Edward Dmytryk directing… The film was called "Farewell My Lovely" in Britain and "Murder, My Sweet" in the United States…

The plot, as always with this genre, mattered far less than the characters and the action: it was sparked when Marlowe was hired to find an ex-convict's girl friend… This Marlowe was played by Dick Powell… He made a daring, successful effort to drop his all-singing, all-dancing image, and he was tough enough; but he was a little too charming, a shade too superficial, to suggest the depths and the strengths of the real Marlowe…

Humphrey Bogart was the man to do this above all others… And he did it superb1y in Howard Hawks' "The Big Sleep" in 1946…

"Murder My Sweet" is a complex thriller which seemed at the time to demonstrate all manner of strikingly new techniques in a film noir mood, and certainly marked an astonishing transformation in its star... Thirty years later, the second half has a jaded look...
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