powell or mitchum version?
i can't decide which is better. both were such great takes on the same story.
shareThough I am a big fan of both Mitchum and Charlotte Rampling, I liked Powell's Marlowe better, Claire Trevor's Velma better and Mike Mazurki's Moose Malloy was absolutely definitive.
I think the second film suffered from it's location shift to England, (Marlowe is 100 percent L.A.) and from being shot in colour, (even if the photography was frequently beautiful), and from the fact that Mitchum was just too old for the part.
Rampling sure looked good though.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
I agree, Powell's is really the definitive portrayal, and the rest of the cast is also top notch. I really have tremendous respect for Mitchum, who I believe has been too often underrated. ('Out of the Past' is one of my very favorite examples of classic film noir; and his portrayal in that film is incomparable.) But Mitchum was getting a bit long in the tooth when he played Marlowe; and I think Powell's portrayal was more natural, more subtle and less stereotypical.
shareThe Powell version has two truly great moments ... the first when Moose Malloy appears suddenly, his looming presence behind Marlowe reflected in the window of Marlowe's dimly lt office, and disappearing as the neon sign lights up outside. The second is the wonderfully shot sequence of Marlowe doped up in the sanitorium.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
Yeah, it's truly one of my top half dozen favorite film noirs, some my other favorites being, in no particular order, 'Double Indemnity', 'The Maltese Falcon', 'The Big Sleep' [the Bogart/Becall version], 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' [the Garfield/Turner version] and 'Out of the Past'. And you can't beat Raymond Chandler's dialog and narration--so evocative, e.g., "I caught the blackjack right behind my ear. A black pool opened up at my feet. I dived in; it had no bottom."
But his plots can become really complicated. So complicated, in fact, that even Chandler said he didn't know who committed one particular murder in 'The Big Sleep'(!). Chandler also wrote, among other things, the screenplay for 'Double Indemnity', which was based on James M. Cain's novel. Chandler also wrote some great TV episodes from the golden age of TV.
The book "Chandler in Hollywood" has all these anecdotes and more, and is profusely illustrated, a great little movie-book.
if you would like some noir recommendations that aren't the usual suspects, try Scarlett Street, The Killers, Force of Evil, The Glass Key, Angel Face, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Kiss Me Deadly, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Kansas City Confidential, White heat, The Big Heat, and Mildred Piece ... they are all interesting, distinctive films, and some are masterpieces.
...also , don't miss the wild and totally wacky films of Samuel Fuller ...see Shock Corridor, or The Naked Kiss and you'll know what I mean.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
Yes, those are all excellent recommendations. I just saw Kiss Me Deadly again recently. I'm always a bit amused by the huge, early version of an answering machine (a big reel-to-reel thing) built into his wall. That was, I believe, Chloris Leachman's first movie role. I also thought that Ralph Meeker made an excellent Mickey Spillane detective.
Btw, one of my hobbies is collecting classic films and TV shows on DVD. So I have all those plus a few thousand more. I also have complete, or nearly complete, classic TV series such as Perry Mason, The Andy Griffith Show, The Twilight Zone, Leave It To Beaver, etc.; and many modern series such as Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, The King of Queens, etc.
A poorly understood law called the Fair Use Law actually allows a private person to have one copy of anything for which they are paying for access. (It is legal, as long as I don't make multiple copies for sale or distribution.)
So I buy blank DVDs in bulk (1,000 at a time) online, with cheap paper sleeves, and it costs me about 30 cents per movie to burn these. I get all the premium movie channels as well as TCM, so it's a pretty good deal vs. renting and, especially, buying.
For those interested in this method, there are also perfectly legal devices that strip off the Macrovision copy protection broadcast signal. If you put one of those upstream of your DVD recorder, you can record anything off any premium channel. And, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, it's all perfectly legal. But the content providers and Macrovision try to mislead people into thinking it's illegal.
Restrictive trade practices by big American companies make the situation here less rosy ... we have, for instance, a much inferior netflix which is missing several features of the US equivalent, and we arrestricted to very few free to air channells because of lobbying pressure from the big local players.The selling practices by the networks also ensure tht to buy one good US. programme, the also have to buy about 20 stinkers in a package. As a result, our commercial channels are awash with crap.
Us laws do not necessarily have an equivalent here.
When I can afford a DVD recorder, I'll look into the macrovision device.
I have a lot of DVDs too, concentrating on the rare and difficult to get.
Have you spotted "Letter To An Unknown Woman" on Turner yet ... the greatest chick-flick of all time in my opinion.
Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver? ... eww! ... I guess you have to be American and in a folksy mood.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
If you mean Max Ophuls' classic 1948 'Letter *from* an Unknown Woman,' I don't recall seeing it on TCM. But if you ask them, I'm sure they'll run it eventually if it's in their vault.
If it's of any interest to you, the 2004 remake is listed on the Netflix website w/this description:
"On a wintry night in 1948 Peking, a writer receives a letter from a dying woman he doesn't know. In the letter, the woman tells of her lifelong love for the man across the stirring backdrop of wartime China. Director and star Jinglei Xu reimagines Max Ophüls's 1948 classic with breathtaking photography and a quietly feminist spin. Xu won a Best Director award at the San Sebastian International Film Festival."
It might be worth renting that version, just to see what it's like. I myself am not usually into chick flicks.
Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver are great for kids, and each generation of kids seems to like them. (Don Knotts won five Emmy awards for that series.)
- Peter
I wouldn't mind seeing the remake, but "Letter from an Unknown Woman" is not just any chick flick, it is great art, an exquisitely beautiful film ... and I don't like chick flicks as a rule either ... it's my fault, it was kind of like calling "Out of the Past" a love-triangle flick.
I know Don Knotts won Emmys, but it's the "ick" factor ... the cutesy, aw-shucks sentimentality of many US sitcom that I cant stand ... give me the acid nastiness of the UKs Absolutely Fabulous any day.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
Powell. The definitive Philip Marlowe, Mitchum nonwithstanding.
Bogart ("The Big Sleep") and Mitchum (although a little old in "Farewell, My Lovely") are great, but Powell's Marlowe in "Murder, My Sweet" is the best.
"the cutesy, aw-shucks sentimentality of many US sitcom that I cant stand ... give me the acid nastiness of the UKs Absolutely Fabulous any day."
If Leave it to Beaver and Absolutely Fabulous are a logical comparison, then I'm Kate Middleton.
The book is not always better.
I think the second film suffered from it's location shift to England, (Marlowe is 100 percent L.A.)
by - bradjanet on Thu Feb 26 2009 22:08:48
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What on earth are you talking about?
By "the second film", I meant the second of the Mitchum Marlowe fims, "The Big Sleep", which is set in England ... perhaps my paragraph structure was sloppy, maybe I was tired and failed whatever snap test you are conducting.
Now you can feel all warm and smug ...er ..snug, having caught out an elderly poster, who shouldn't even be on the net, in a senior moment. I apologise profoundly and shall return to my whittling.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
Nope... my mistake. Despite reading quite a bit about movies, I still had never heard of the second Marlowe/Mitchum movie in the 70s.
Whoops, I'm the dope. Pardon my know-it-all-ism.
Your dopey know-it-all-ism, (what a graceful turn of phrase) is entirely forgiven and pales in comparison to much of the aggressive nastiness that is so commonly found on this site.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
I agree that MURDER, MY SWEET was the better take on the novel, but I feel Powell wasn't as good a Marlowe as Mitchum. Powell played the famous P.I. as a physically unimposing jerk with a very bad attitude, while Mitchum, though old, played him as a big, easygoing mug. I've always felt a young Mitchum would have been the ideal Marlowe because of his mellow air, his big frame, his slightly dissipated aura matching those of the P.I. in his mid-thirties for this novel.
The Mitchum version of THE BIG SLEEP was shot in England. FAREWELL MY LOVELY was shot here in Los Angeles, and the ship sequence was actually filmed on board the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
I agree a young Mitchum would have been perfect, (I'm a fan), but I think he was way to old in that outing.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
quote from bradjanet:
I think the second film suffered from it's location shift to England, (Marlowe is 100 percent L.A.)
But the location wasn't shifted to England... Maybe the poster was thinking of a different movie..?
You're right ... i was thinking of the Mitchum version of "The Big Sleep" .... Senior moment.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.
"I think the second film suffered from it's location shift to England, (Marlowe is 100 percent L.A.) and from being shot in colour, (even if the photography was frequently beautiful), and from the fact that Mitchum was just too old for the part."
don't know if any of the many replies on this thread corrected this. I read about the first 5 or 6 and it hadn't been...
Mitchum's 'Farewell My Lovely' was NOT set in England, it was still L.A. Mitchum's 'The Big Sleep', however, was moved to England.
"Love has got to stop some place short of suicide."
Very old news ... i gave a cringing apology ages ago.
But you ARE Blanche ... and I AM.