Farewell, My Lovely (1975) ****

In the world of hard-boiled, detective fiction, there's Philip Marlowe, and then there's everybody else. Oh sure, some will point to Sam Spade or that Spenser, For Hire guy, but for me, Marlowe is the apotheosis of the hard-drinking, laconic, battered, white-knight detective. He's a tough guy, but not supernaturally tough. He receives more ass-whippings than he deals out, but he always gets back up and gets back on the case.

Most will point to Humphrey Bogart's depiction of Marlowe in “The Big Sleep,” but re-watching that film, I found that it wasn't quite as good as I had remembered it. It's a little too cute, and the chemistry between Bogart and Lauren Bacall is actually distracting. Bogart always seems to be looking for a chance to get in another clever one-liner, while making sure the camera catches his good side. “Farewell, My Lovely” isn't burdened with any of that. Robert Mitchum's Marlowe is just a tough-guy who likes his whiskey and likes to make an honest buck.

We find Marlowe feeling, for the first time, “tired, and realizing I was growing old. Maybe it was the rotten weather we'd had in L.A. Maybe the rotten cases I'd had. Mostly chasing a few missing husbands and then chasing their wives once I found them, in order to get paid. Or maybe it was just the plain fact that I am tired and growing old.” We follow Marlowe on one of those rotten cases, returning a runaway teen to her rich, arrogant parents. On that case, Marlowe meets his next client, a giant of a man, named Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran). Fresh out of prison for bank robbery, Moose wants Marlowe to find his old girlfriend, Velma, with nothing more to go on than her name and the club where she used to dance. The club is now a black club, where no one knows anything about a white girl from seven years ago, but don't think that will stop Marlowe. He follows the cold trail through the seedy underbelly of L.A., meeting washed-up showgirls, madames, gangsters, and a rich judge's young wife (Charlotte Rampling), suffering more concussions along the way than an NFL linebacker.

It has to be said that Robert Mitchum was a bit on the old side for the role. It's especially off-putting to see him at an old-looking 58 flirting with the 29-year-old Charlotte Rampling. Fortunately, Mitchum is so good that he makes up for the age issue. He nails the two essential Marlowe characteristics. First, Marlowe is as world-weary as they come. From his time as a cop to his years as a private eye, he's seen more corruption than anyone should. Marlowe has no illusions about humanity. Despite all that, the second Marlowe trait is his old-fashioned sense of decency. Marlowe lives hand to mouth because he won't cheat a client, he won't take a bribe, and he won't do something that he knows is inherently wrong. He lives in a dirty world, but he refuses to let it make him filthy.

Bogart's “The Big Sleep” Marlowe is clearly the most famous, but for my money, the best Phillip Marlowe is a tie between Robert Mitchum in this film and Elliot Gould's Marlowe from "The Long Goodbye." It's an apples to oranges comparison, because, while the films were only released a couple of years apart, “Farewell, My Lovely” is a classic noir set in the 1940s, while “The Long Goodbye” drags the old-fashioned detective into the swinging 1970s. How to decide between the two? Just watch them both!

4 stars out of 5