Farewell My Lovely - 1975 film review

The 1975 version of Farewell My Lovely, based on Raymond Chandler's novel, is widely acclaimed. The first time I saw it, many years ago, I was underwhelmed, but I decided to give it another try and I'm glad I did. Second time around, I was more impressed by Robert Mitchum's interpretation of Philip Marlowe. Originally I felt he was too old for the part and not quite suited to it anyway. On reflection, I think he does a better job than I realised.

Perhaps I was simply in the right mood for the film this time. Mood and atmosphere are extremely important to the film (which is set in 1941) and the director Dick Richards did a good job on that score. Speaking of scores, David Shire's music is also well-suited to the film. The screenplay by David Zelag Goodman (whose other credits include The Eyes of Laura Mars) avoids falling into the trap of pastiche. 

Quite apart from Mitchum, the cast is very strong. Moose Malloy, the huge bank robber who is crazy about a missing woman called Velma, and hires Marlowe to find her, can't have been easy to cast, but Jack O'Halloran, a former boxer whose first film role this was, does a great job. The famously sultry Charlotte Rampling is good as Helen Grayle, while Sylvia Miles makes the most of a smaller part, the alcoholic Jessie Florian: her performance earned her an Oscar nomination and deservedly so. Fascinatingly, Judge Grayle is played by the legendary hardboiled writer Jim Thompson. There's even a part for the young Sylvester Stallone.

This film isn't in the same league as Polanski's Chinatown, which was released a year earlier, but even though it lacks originality, I now think it's very effective entertainment. As with books, some films definitely improve on a second look.

Forgotten Book - The Killer Inside Me

Jim Thompson's 1952 novel The Killer Inside Me has been filmed a couple of times, though I haven't seen either movie. In fact, I've only just got round to reading the book. I was very taken with Thompson's The Getaway, but did wonder if The Killer Inside Me would suffer by comparison with an earlier novel, which also presents the world from the perspective of a psychopathic serial killer, Dorothy B. Hughes' In a Lonely Place. In fact, it's very different, and also very powerful.

The premise is gripping. Lou Ford is a 29 year old deputy sheriff in a small town in Texas. Everyone likes him, he helps people out when the chance arises, and he's very attractive to women. The local newspapers extol his virtues. The only snag is that he's afflicted by "the sickness" - an urge to kill. He's kept things under control for a long time, but when he meets Joyce Lakeland, the old demons re-emerge.

Whereas Hughes wrote her novel in elegant prose, there's something visceral about Thompson's style that suits the material. Lou's habit of talking in endless cliches is an intriguing way of characterising an apparently easy-going guy who begins to lose control of his behaviour. As the body count rises, so suspicion starts to swirl around him. Can he get away with multiple murder?

There's a fascinating chapter towards the end of the story where Lou converses with a man named Walker. I don't want to give any spoilers, but it rather sums up why I admire this book - in a deceptively simple style, Thompson makes points that pack a punch. It took me a long time to get round to reading much Thompson, and I gather that his work is uneven, but at his best, he was very, very good.

Forgotten Book - The Getaway

Because of my keen and lifelong enthusiasm for Golden Age detective fiction, people sometimes express surprise when I mention the American hardboiled books that I admire. But there's nothing inconsistent about liking both types of writing, far from it. I like good crime fiction of all kinds, and today's Forgotten Book is an example. It's The Getaway, by Jim Thompson.

Thompson was an interesting character, and not long ago I read his biography, Savage Art, by Robert Polito, which is informative and very well-written. Although he died in obscurity, Thompson predicted that he'd become famous, and there was a great revival of interest in his work a few years after his death. Several of his novels have been filmed, and indeed The Getaway was filmed by Sam Peckinpah while Thompson was still alive.

It's a book that I find quite remarkable. The central story concerns a bank robber, Carter "Doc" McCoy, who is married to a former librarian called Carol, who takes to the criminal life with gusto. Doc is unwise enough to collaborate with a villain called Rudy Torrento, and inevitably "the perfect job" goes wrong. Doc and Carol end up fleeing for their lives, with the forces of law and order after them, as well as Rudy.

The story of their fugitive experience is gripping, but Thompson has up his sleeve a final chapter that is, by any standards, quite stunning. I can't think of anything quite like it in the crime genre. Not even Sam Peckinpah, incidentally, was up to the task of trying to film it (rather like Hitchcock's failure to master the dark finale of Francis Iles' Before the Fact - you knew I'd get a Golden Age reference in somewhere, didn't you?!) I really enjoyed this book.

Recently, by the way, I've also read Thompson's After Dark, My Sweet. This is another good and highly readable book, narrated by a strangely sympathetic psychopath, though I wouldn't rate it as highly as The Getaway.

Forgotten Book - In a Lonely Place

In a Lonely Place is a justly admired film noir starring Humphrey Bogart, but until this year I'd never come across the novel on which it is based, written by Dorothy B. Hughes, and first published in 1947. The book is quite different from the film in some crucial respects, but I must say that I really, really enjoyed it. It's compelling, very well-written, and just the right length for the material.

The story is told in the third person, but everything is seen through the eyes of Dickson (Dix) Steele, a former pilot who has not found the adjustment to peacetime easy. Hughes describes something that hadn't really struck me very powerfully before - how for some men, war service offered excitement, and a sense of achievement that was unavailable elsewhere. And she describes it so well that I was convinced by Dix and by his often irrational behaviour. He is a memorable character.

The setting is Los Angeles, and very well-evoked that city is too, with fogs worthy of Bleak House, and a strange mix of urban glitz and leisurely beach life. Dix is staying in the home of an absent rich friend, and renews a friendship with a former colleague in the military, only to find that Brub Nicolai has married, and become a policeman.

Given that it soon becomes clear that Dix is a serial strangler, this relationship offers both insight into the police investigation and huge risks. Matters are further complicated when Dix falls for a neighbour, a glamorous but erratic actress called Laurel. Hughes describes Dix's increasingly wild mood swings credibly and with occasional touches of cool wit. This is a very, very good book, and although similar ground has been covered many times since, the quality of Hughes' prose makes it memorable in its own right, and not just as a precursor to later books by Patricia Highsmith, Jim Thompson, and countless others.