Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Nice effects though.

Absolutely Fantastic

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

What a great film! I love the snappy lines of film noir and this film did not disappoint :) It got a little convoluted in one part but overall held together pretty well.

Robert Mitchum made two films for ITC in which he played the famous Raymond Chandler character, Philip Marlowe...."Farewell, My Lovely" and "The Big Sleep". "Farewell My Lovely" is by far the best of the two, as the studio took a lot of care to get the 1940s look just right. In contract, the follow-up film was set in the present day and was a big disappointment. So if you have to see one of these, DEFINITELY make it "Farewell, My Lovely".A huge, hulking man, Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran) has been in prison 7 years and cannot find his old girlfriend, Velma. So he demands the Marlowe take the case...of the implication is that he'll rearrange Marlowe's face. This, and the fact he can pay, result in Marlowe taking the case. However, it soon becomes pretty obvious that Vera doesn't wanna be found and soon all sorts of bad things start happening to Marlowe. Can he somehow survive all this and get to the bottom of this?The best version of this story was the 1944 film "Murder, My Sweet" with Dick Powell. However, one of the problems with the film was that the Chandler novel was heavily sanitized. After all, there was the Production Code which forbade much of what happens in the sordid story. So, in this 1970s Robert Mitchum version, you hear cursing, see Marlowe slug a 'lady' in the mouth, hear references to a character being a homosexual and you see a bit of nudity. It certainly is a tougher version of the story. However, this alone don't make it better...though the Mitchum version is quite good. He's fine in the role--world- weary, cynical and worth seeing even if he is a tad old for the part. However, I still think Dick Powell was a bit better--a bit more cynical and smart-mouthed. However, for me I love the story so much it's a no-brainer...see them both. Or, better yet, see the first version as well--"The Falcon Takes Over". While it's the farthest from the original source material, it is very good as well because Chandler's story idea was so good...it can't help but be enjoyable.

The other night I watched the 1975 adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1941 novel, Farewell, My Lovely. I found it to be very disappointing and was surprised at how poorly acted and directed it was. Admittedly, Chandler's novels are difficult to adapt to the screen. Their plots are often extremely complicated and too often there are too many loose ends left hanging at the end of the novel. But this 1975 adaptation is hampered by bad acting, poor casting, questionable story line changes, and a cliché-ridden, made for TV- movie soundtrack. In truth, the film is not really "neo-noir" but a Hollywood manufactured "nostalgic-noir" that occasionally turns out to be a campy version of the original and too often seems like a parody of the noir genre. First of all, with the exception of Mitchum, the acting is somewhat predictable and wooden. Mitchum is one of the greatest noir actors of all time and to hear his narration throughout the film is a real treat. His voice was made to bring to life Chandler's words on the page. But it is painful to see that Mitchum is clearly too old for the part of Phillip Marlow. It is one thing for Marlowe to look world weary but to look almost haggard and flabby with age is too depressing. It is obvious that Mitchum's appearance in the role is simply meant to be a nostalgia trip for all his fans who remember better days. Jack O'Halloran as Moose Malloy is one of the most wooden actors you will ever see on the screen. He is never able to bring about the sense of tension between danger and humor that inhabits his character. As a result, it is hard to understand why Marlow feels sympathetic towards him. Just because O'Halloran was a heavyweight prizefighter at one time and has the correct physical characteristics doesn't necessarily make him convincing in the role. These are the kind of characters that the former football player, Alex Karris, used to get during this same time period when ever any studio needed a big dumb guy. The result is the same here, bad acting. O'Halloran's acting ability is so limited that he often comes across as an imitation of Lurch in the 1960's sitcom, The Adams Family. Sylvia Miles as Jessie Florian is a very good actress but unfortunately she is miscast as the aging and spent alcoholic. In the mid-1970's when this film was made she seems too young for the part and doesn't really have the wasted and desperate look that is so convincingly described in the book. The character of Detective McNulty is totally transformed in the movie. In the book, he is a minor character who is portrayed as cowardly and ineffectual. But the movie combined his character with another police detective, Randall, who in the book is smart, cynical, and an even match for Marlowe's wit and imagination. It turns out the movie cannot seem to decide if the McNulty character is ineffectual or shrewd since he seems to oscillate back and forth between the two. I suspect the main reason this movie was made was an effort by Hollywood to try and exploit the success that Chinatown made when it appeared 2 years earlier. Whereas Chinatown was brilliantly directed, well written and acted, and cynically dark like the noir films of old, this version of Farewell, My Lovely seems exploitive, slick, and hopelessly phony. Nothing beats Nicolson's portrayal of world weariness at the end of Chinatown. Unfortunately, Mitchum who was such a master at playing bitter, weary protagonists early in his career, can't seem to pull it off convincingly later in his career. Perhaps he was too weary with acting by this time and didn't really have it in him anymore to make the effort. My advice is to skip this movie and, if you haven't already, go read the novel. You will get much more satisfaction out of the beauty of Chandler's language than anything you can get out of this seriously flawed film.

I am a fan of Mitchum's acting, although I wish they had put him in a Chandler movie earlier in his career. He is kind of set into his image by the time this film was made; he had the cowboy down, and then the slightly seedy offbeat character like this one.One funny thing I read in a bio on RM; the suit he wears in the film (the only costume he wears) is an original from the costume department from the 1940's and had Victor Buono's name in it; RM complained it stunk the whole time he was in it. Also the scene when he sings with Jessie (Sylvia Miles) the former saloon singer, was an ad-lib scene, the song chosen on the spot since he knew the words. They got the rights to use it cleared later.I'm not quite sure if it was filmed in color, or if the version I saw this week was a colorized one; seems like it should have been done in black and white, and I was almost sure it was. It loses a lot of atmosphere in color, in any case.In any case, it is a decent piece of entertainment with pretty good acting by all, though some of the characters seem to hardly be acting at all. Of course that is Robert Mitchum's style and claim to fame.