The only man who can compete with Humphrey Bogart as Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe is Dick Powell, an actor previously known for his roles in 1930s and 40s comedies and musicals. The name of the film is Murder My Sweet, an adaptation of Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely.
The film opens with Marlowe at the police station. He’s in an interrogation room, his eyes are bandaged, the police offer him a cigarette, he begins his story… And it’s a good one about a huge ex-con just out of prison looking for his lady love (cute as lace pants) ; a stolen jade necklace and a blackmailing psychic.
Dick Powell’s Philip Marlowe is a lonelier man than Bogart’s Marlowe inThe Big Sleep.In the opening of this story, Marlowe pages through his little black book looking for a woman: Nothing like soft shoulders to improve the morale. Only Soft Shoulders has a date. That’s the way it is for Philip Marlowe in Murder My Sweet, and the way Dick Powell plays him it’s easy to understand why he doesn’t have a friend or a steady girl. He’s not a very likeable guy. What he is is dogged. Once he accepts a job, he won’t quit running down leads until he delivers what he’s been hired to do. He can’t be bribed, reasoned with, threatened or seduced: he’s on a job and we can’t help admiring his tenacity.
Claire Trevor plays a wonderful femme fatale: smart, sexy and ruthless. But here’s something I don’t understand: the more she puts the moves on our detective, the more his lip curls in disgust, the more sarcastic he becomes. Why does she not pick up on these cues? We the audience surely do. He still beds her, of course (another thing I can never understand about men—if you know you can’t trust someone, why do you have sex with them?) Afterwards our femme fatale figures she’s bagged him. But the way it works out, he’s bagged her and we can’t help despising her for not realizing she was played.
This story was redone (titled Farewell My Lovely) starring Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe. Murder My Sweet is the better film.