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.

Starring two of my favorite actors,  Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame,  In a Lonely Place is a story about Dix Steele, a screenwriter with a bad attitude and a volcanic temper. Turns out Dix is a World War II veteran which seems to be the root of his rage and cynicism. I’m reminded of the Alan Ladd character in The Blue Dahlia, another story of a disillusioned war veteran.

Back to Dix. He gets picked up for questioning about a young woman’s murder. She’s the hat check girl Dix hired the night before to tell him about the novel she’s just read and that he needs to write a screenplay for. The audience knows that although Dix is not the most chivalrous dude in the world, he didn’t hurt her. Dix becomes a suspect because of his smart ass attitude and his lack of sympathy for the girl’s death.  He’s saved from being jailed by his neighbor who witnessed him sending the girl home.

The neighbor is Gloria Grahame as Laurel Gray. Dix and Laurel quickly fall in love. He tells Laurel, there she is, the one that’s different. She’s not coy or cute or corny, she’s a good guy. I’m glad she’s on my side. She speaks her mind, she knows what she wants.

I love that he calls the romantic lead a “good guy.” Again, it reminds me of The Blue Dahlia where Veronica Lake plays the good guy role. Lauren Bacall in Dark Passage and Jean Hagen in The Asphalt Jungle also play the good guys.

In most film noir, the wife and mother is as important to the story as wallpaper. The damsel in distress is often treated with a large dose of cynicism and the career woman often doubles as seductress. In film noir the seductress is despised. Either the protagonist doesn’t realize he’s being played and the audience despises her, (think Out of the Past, The Asphalt Jungle, Double Indemnity, On Dangerous Ground.) Or the protagonist is on to her and she disgusts him (think The Maltese Falcon, Murder My Sweet.)

The woman-as-good-guy is not like most romantic roles. Her primary task is not lover, mother or domestic but pal and help-mate.  In each of these stories the woman’s goal is believing in and helping the protagonist stay out of jail. Gloria Grahame’s role In a Lonely Place is sexier and more traditionally feminine than the other films I’ve listed. Another way her role is different from the other stories is that her belief in Dix is conditional. Her trust is undermined by the police, by Dix’s friends and by witnessing his rage first hand.

The story turns on whether the lovers can survive as a couple long enough for the murder to be solved. If you’re expecting a happy ending, you don’t know your noir.

Men have been blaming women for their own damn weaknesses for as long as they’ve been telling stories. A favorite scapegoat is the femme fatale, “deadly woman.” Deadly has been luring men to their doom since Eve ate the apple and took the rap for humanity getting kicked out of paradise. Cleopatra, Circe, Delilah and Aphrodite (goddess of the sideways glance) are all members of this sorority.

It only makes sense that the cynicism in noir fiction would fasten on the femme fatale. Story after story, film after film dismisses the woman as wife and mother and loyal confidante and fixates on the deadly woman.

But not all femme fatales are created equal.  There are the sexpots with an agenda. Examples are Barbara Stanwyck as Phyllis from Double Indemnity, Lana Turner as Cora from The Postman Always Rings Twice, Claire Trevor as Helen from Murder My Sweet and Barbara Stanwyck again as Martha from The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (the divine Stanwyck couldn’t play innocent if her hair was on fire.)  In these stories the guy knows from the get-go the  woman is big trouble, but he just has to have sex with her. It’s  the same impulse that gets a widow spider’s head chewed off.

I’m a fan of the vulnerable femme fatale. As a reader and a viewer, I want to stand alongside the troubled male protagonist and hope that maybe, maybe she’s telling me the truth and that a happy ending is possible. For that I give you Jane Greer.

Take a look at Greer as Kathie in Out of the Past. She’s young and beautiful. Her gangster boyfriend claims she shot him and stole forty K from him (mind you, this is back in 1947!) Her eyes get all dewy and her lip trembles and Ibelieve it when she says that yeah, she shot him, she hated him, but she never took the money. The poor detective (Robert Mitchum) doesn’t have a prayer. Talk about your dramatic tension. Time and again she lies to Mitchum, she almost gets him killed and I’m right there with him thinking maybe it’s a mistake. Far into the movie she says to him, “Don’t you believe me?” He says, “Baby, I don’t care.”

Wow. I’ve so been there. He’s being played. He knows it, I know it. It’s 1947. It’s Out of the Past. It’s relevant. Trust me.