Phillip Marlowe Movies

[MK]

I always did like the look of a fedora with a trench coat. I guess that is why I like gumshoe flicks. There is something about the privite eye that makes for a good story. Is it the dark smokey little office or is the way both guys and dames are always looking for his help? Perhaps it is that tough guy attitude.

Actually I think it is all that....but it is that fine line that the privite detective must walk between hero and villian that is the most interesting. He walks right up to the edge and even dangles his toes over precariously. He tries to keep his balance...to keep from from falling over edge and becoming no different than the criminals that he hunts.

Phillip Marlowe is one of the classic sleuths. He has been played by several actors. There is no one guy that we associate with the character like we do for say, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Sam Spade or Dick Tracey.

I am in the process of watching a few Marlowe flicks:

Murder my Sweet (1944) with Dick Powell is a great noir detective flick. This one is my favorite so far even though it is very dark. I think the print the tape was made from was not good. It is gainy and contrasty (is that a word?) in a way that looks like it is due to the transfer rather than the original film. I hope they put this one on DVD.

Bogart did a fine job as usual in The Big Sleep (1946). I think it is one of Bogies better films. Having Becall in there was a big plus. It's a keeper.

That same year Robert Montgomery played Marlowe in the irriataing Lady in the Lake, where the camera is the detectives eyes. We only see him when he lookes in a mirror. (I really loath that POV style of story telling when it is used for the whole movie.)

I can't bring myself to rent The Long Goodbye (1973). Elliot Gould. Enough said.

Tomorrow I plan to watch Robert Mitchum play the wise-cracking tough guy in Farewell My Lovely (1975).

Stick around. I will let you know how it turns out.

 

[Chamorro]

I have fond memories of the mid-eighties HBO series starring Powers Booth.

 

[Renderking Fisk]

Originally posted by Chamorro
I have fond memories of the mid-eighties HBO series starring Powers Booth.

That's what made having HBO over the other Movie Channels. Any word if that serise coming to VHS or DVD anytime soon?

 

[Sergei]

It's funny I just saw the "Big Sleep" over the weekend since I just bought the DVD. I saw it years back and remembered the quality acting, but the plot as I remembered it, was overly complex. So I thought it was worth buying just to seeing it again paying more attention to the plot.

Dumb question. Bogart played Marlowe only once?

 

[Renderking Fisk]

Sad to say?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ Bogart only played Marlowe once as far as I know. He could have done the rest of them with ease. His performance was so powerful and he made such a huge mark as Marlowe that when I read the other Chandler novels I can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t picture anyone else other then Bogart.

 

[Michaelson]

The Dick Powell version was a break out performance for the actor, as he had always been cast in movie after movie as a song and dance man. He wanted gritter parts, and demanded to play Marlowe, to his agents horror, who claimed he was commiting professional suicide. Powell played it for all it was worth, and won rave reviews, and much better parts for his efforts. Regards. Michaelson

 

[MK]

Farewell My Lovely (1975) I thought I was having deja vu when a big guy who happened to be named "Moose" showed up. This was just a poor remake of Murder my Sweet. Robert

I know know why this one passed me buy in '75. It is a missed opportunity. Mitchum was ten+ years too old for the part. The film stock looked like it wore like from the late fifties with lots of grain and contrast,,,,,but what really killed it was the cinematography. The DP couldn't shoot his way out of a paper bag. OK. Some of the acting was subpar....but I bet that was due to less than great direction. The one little ray of light for me was that they used a cabin on the Queen Mary as one of their interiors.

So far the only good Marlowe movies are Bogies and Dick Powell.

Any suggestions?

 

[Michael Mallory]

"The Lady in the Lake" with Robert Montgomery is the third classic 40s Marlowe movie, but it's the worst. That's the one with the camera POV gimmick, which is interesting for about one reel. It also has a classic blooper: the lettering on Marlowe's window spells his name "Phillip" with two Ls. It's probably the studio's way of indicating he isn't the real thing, just an imposter.

 

[Imahomer]

I haven't watched a Marlowe movie since I don't know when! You guys have inspired me though. I'm going to see if I can find a couple this weekend and put some time in watching them.

 

[MK]

The HBO Marlowe series is pretty good. Booth is just decent in the scenes, but has a great voice for the voice overs. I do wish he had a better looking fedora though....and they seem to avoid the trench coat......which is a shame.

The cinematography is good in two out of the three episodes I have watched so far.

I love the sultry saxophone theme of the show.

One thing that seems to be a problem with most period shows is that the era that it is shot in seeps in. The HBO series is no exception. The make-up on the women have a bit of an 80's slant. They are also a little too skinny to look like 30's actresses.

Another interesting thing is that they seem to avoid having Marlowe shoot anybody. He whips out that two inch .38 all the time, but he never uses it. Everybody else does the shooting for him. Sounds like an 80's man to me.

 

[Michael Mallory]

The recent A&E "Nero Wolfe" series was even more of a period trainwreck. They seemed unable to decide what decade the stories were set in, so they covered all bases by having 1930s music, 1940s costumes and 1950s cars, all in the same episode. Worse, none of the hats were authentic to the 30s, 40s or 50s. They looked more 1960s vintage Dobbs.

 

[Marlowe]

Originally posted by MK

So far the only good Marlowe movies are Bogies and Dick Powell.

Any suggestions? [/B]

I STRONGLY suggest you read the books. (And the short stories.) The language in the books is beautiful. Chandler is one of America's great authors--one of English's great authors, in fact, as important to his genre and literature in general as Ian Fleming, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Forester.

So read the books, I doubt you'll be disappointed. They put the movies to shame, partly because they are both more and less racy than the movies. The books don't have any contrived scenes in them to display Lauren Bacall's singing talent or to capitalize on the "To Have And To Have Not" Bogey/Bacall one-liners and zingers chemistry.

Before I read the books, I too had Humphrey Bogart as my mental picture of what Marlowe looked and sounded like as he went through his actions in the stories. After reading the books, I'd have to say that I no longer see Bogart when I picture Marlowe. Don't misunderstand: I think Bogart did an excellent job of ACTING LIKE Marlowe, given the limitations of the script he was playing from. He just doesn't fit the physical description. Chandler himself said that if he could pick the actor to play Marlowe that he would probably select Carey Grant.

 

[MK]

I am fifty pages in The Big Sleep. I am enjoying it......though it doesn't have as much of the hard boiled dialog that I expected with Marlowe. Did that develope as the time went on?

Cary Grant?! I don't see that at all.....then again Tom Clancy said that Ben Affleck was much closer to being what he had in mind for Jack Ryan than Harrison Ford. Go figure.

 

[Matt Deckard]

The recent A&E "Nero Wolfe" series was even more of a period trainwreck.

I can't agree more, I was mortified watching the costumes. Looked like some of the ladies walked out of the 60's on a few episodes. They could have done a much better job had they done their homework or picked a decade.

 

[MK]

Booth should have worn a hair piece for the same reason Bogart did. He would have looked better.

The 80's make-up on the actresses is really distracting. They all look like they just came out of either a Duran-Duran or Pat Benatar video.

I watched six episodes and they were enjoyable. I sure wish someone would have made a great noir gum shoe series.

 

[Marlowe]

Originally posted by MK
I am fifty pages in The Big Sleep. I am enjoying it......though it doesn't have as much of the hard boiled dialog that I expected with Marlowe. Did that develop as time went on?

Cary Grant?! I don't see that at all.....then again Tom Clancy said that Ben Affleck was much closer to being what he had in mind for Jack Ryan than Harrison Ford. Go figure.

The hard-boiled dialogue was actually present before he assembled "The Big Sleep." He wrote a lot of short stories for pulp detective fiction magazines like "Black Mask." Then, later, he would go back and assemble some of these plotlines together into a novel, rewriting, editing and improving as he went. "Cannibalizing," he called it. Slang and hard-boiled dialogue were some of the selling points of these pulp magazines, so of course there's some in the short stories and the books. He didn't seem to get carried away with it, though. He was pretty good at realistic-reading dialogues, and most people don't fill their speech with slang.

The best guy for that kind of talk was Dashiell Hammett. He actually was a detective for the Pinkerton Agency and was up on criminal and hobo and other types of slang. The only known instance of Hammett being wrong in his use of slang was when used the term "gunsel" to describe a character in "The Maltese Falcon." His use of the word implied "gunman," but the word is actually from the Yiddish "ganzel," and means, if I recall correctly, "boy homosexual prostitute." He did it on purpose, to get back at an editor who had put the kibosh on his use of the hobos' term, "on the gooseberry lay," which sounded too racy, but meant something like "stealing laundry off the line," or some other such more innocent larceny.

If you're reading Chandler for the first time, I envy you. He's great. Still, I keep going back to read them again and again. I always learn something new every time.

Also, if you're in the L.A. area, a lot of the neighborhoods and locales Chandler describes are still the same, or close enough that you'll be able to recognize them. So you can read him and imagine what the area was like before the blight of urban sprawl had wiped out all the ranches, orange groves, interurban commuter trains (reborn decades later), before the freeway system, the supermarket, the fast-food drive-through, the 7-11, the yuppie-snobby coffee bar, the 24-screen "cineplex."

(Sigh.)

 

[Renderking Fisk]

One of the things I like about Chandlers work is his generosity with the characters and how all of them have great lines besides Marlowe. I also like his economy with words... not taking pages and pages to describe the setting.

 

[Marlowe]

For a site that shows some of the landmarks of Chandler-era Los Angeles area see:

http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/html/la.htm

And of course, the "Chandlerisms" (http://home.comcast.net/~mossrobert/html/chandlerisms/chandlerisms.htm) are pretty irresistible.

If you like Chandler, you'll probably like the site. It explains a few details that have changed since he wrote his books and stories.

If Chandler's not my most favorite author, I can't think of one that I like more.

 

[MK]

I finished reading The Big Sleep and really enjoyed it. I was surprised to find out some of the points had been changed....especially the way it ends compared to the movie.

I liked it so much I am now reading Trouble is My Business .

Today I picked up a book titled Raymond Chandler in Hollywood. It talks about the Hollywood of the thirties and forties which is the setting of the Marlowe books.

 

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Renderking Fisk
One of the things I like about Chandlers work is his generosity with the characters and how all of them have great lines besides Marlowe. I also like his economy with words... not taking pages and pages to describe the setting.

So you must like Michener! Very concise author.

-Sergei