Farewell, My Lovely -
Fedoras? Trench coats? A jazz soundtrack? This must be that film noir thing I've heard so much about. It's a story about noir royalty Philip Marlowe in which he’s tasked with tracking down a Richard Kiel-like ex-con's dame and being a hired gun for the ransom of a valuable jade necklace. Are the jobs related? There is a distinct possibility.
The movie has a flashback structure, which I approve of since it allows for the kind of narration that
The Naked Gun lovingly parodied. The dialogue is also music to the ears thanks to lines like "this car sticks out like spats at an Iowa picnic." It may not be plainly obvious since he defines stoicism, but I could tell that Robert Mitchum had fun with the role of Marlowe, and he injects it with just the right amount of cynicism and world-weariness. I also approve of Charlotte Rampling's femme fatale, and while there's an age gap between her and Mitchum, it didn't bother me since she would be irresistible to all ages. While the mystery isn't the hardest one to solve, the way the movie does the big reveal makes up for it, as does how much fun the stops are along the way, particularly the trippy one at a brothel. My only gripe is that despite how good the costumes and jazzy score are, it doesn't quite capture the essence of the '40s as much as I would have liked. While it doesn’t capture the magic Robert Altman achieved in the only other and likely to remain my favorite Marlowe movie,
The Long Goodbye, the important thing is that it inspired me to put the rest of them on my watchlist.