Musicals, gangster films and westerns – according to Martin Scorsese, those three genres defined American cinema in the 20th century. Scorsese could have made another addition to the list: film noir. Based on the hard-boiled detective novels of the 1930s, this genre is usually associated with Hollywood films made one decade later. Through the years film noir, like everything else, evolved and took many forms, but the one usually associated with the term is defined by 1940s Los Angeles settings and a private investigator as protagonist. The writer most responsible for this is the man who inspired some of the 1940s classics – Raymond Chandler. The popularity of Chandler's work continued to inspire filmmakers in later decades, and one of the films that tried very hard to be a faithful adaptation of Chandler's writings is Farewell, My Lovely, the 1975 film directed by Dick Richards.
The script for this film is the second adaptation of Chandler's 1934 novel Farewell, My Lovely (the first being Edward Dmytryk's 1944 classic Murder, My Sweet). The plot is set in Los Angeles during the early days of summer 1941. While the world watches German panzers invading Russia and America watches Joe DiMaggio trying to beat baseball records, private investigator Philip Marlowe (played by Robert Mitchum) is forced to take all kinds of humiliating tasks in order to fill his bank account. His next client is someone with whom the majority of sensible people would hardly have any business – Moose Malloy (played by Jack O'Halloran), a petty criminal of huge and menacing stature. Malloy wants to get in touch with his girlfriend Velma Valent, and Marlowe agrees to help him, not knowing that he would get entangled in a complex web of intrigue, corruption and murder that somehow connects Los Angeles’ political establishment with its sleazy criminal underworld.
While many modern-day film noirs try to recreate 1940s Los Angeles through production design, costumes or cars, Farewell, My Lovely goes a little bit further. Events in the film are framed with references to real history, and David Zelag Goodman's script – one of the most faithful adaptations of Chandler's texts – doesn't shy away from portraying some ugly realities of the time, usually ignored by Hollywood: the mistreatment of black people and rampant police corruption. But the most visible attempt to capture the 1940s on film happens through John A. Alonzo's excellent cinematography, inspired by some of the classic paintings that captured American urban nightlife in those times. Most of the film takes place at night, and the dominant colour is red, thus creating the impression of Los Angeles as one great brothel. In such a context, even some of the more familiar elements of a Chandler adaptation – like voice-overs or femmes fatales – don't look like clichés.
Robert Mitchum was right on the spot as the world's most famous private detective. With his wrinkled face, he expressed the world-weariness and cynicism of Philip Marlowe very well; when the role demanded he show some humanity, those scenes were especially poignant. The rest of the cast wasn't that impressive, with the exception of Sylvia Miles in the excellent role of a washed-up chorus girl. Charlotte Rampling, for all her efforts to capture the on-screen magic of Lauren Bacall, still looks too beautiful for this film. The film also suffers from a couple of plot developments that could be best described as deus ex machina, and one of those scenes even serves the rather obvious purpose of delivering some gratuitous female nudity. Yet, despite those flaws, Farewell, My Lovely, with a couple of excellent performances and an impressive reconstruction of the period, is a very entertaining film that could be recommended even to those viewers who aren't film noir aficionados.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on February 10th 2003)
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