Murder, My Sweet

Director: Edward Dmytryk Edward Dmytryk

Overview

One-time movie crooner Dick Powell literally turned his career around in the 1944 film noir Murder My Sweet. Powell stars as Phillip Marlowe, the hard-boiled private detective antihero created by novelist Raymond Chandler. Hired by hulking, psychotic Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to locate Moose's old girl friend, Marlowe is pitched headlong into a morass of intrigue and deception. The participants include duplicitous glamour-girl Claire Trevor, sodden slattern Esther Howard, suave blackmailer Otto Kruger and dyspeptic doctor Ralf Harolde. At one point, Marlowe is railroaded into a lunatic asylum, where under the influence of drugs he experiences a surrealistic nightmare the like of which would not be seen on screen again until Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). So fascinating are the "bad" characters in Murder My Sweet that the two 100% "good" characters, heroine Anne Shirley and detective Don Douglas, seem wishy-washy wimps by comparison. After years of insipid golly-gee roles, Dick Powell startled his fans with his cynical, world-weary portrayal of Philip Marlowe. The part put him back on top of the box-office tallies and enabled him to extend his acting career into the 1950s, which led to an even more lucrative "third life" as a powerful TV-studio executive. Murder My Sweet was based on Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, previously filmed in 1942 as The Falcon Takes Over; a remake, Farewell, My Lovely, was produced in 1975, with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe.

Product Details

Release Date:	10/28/2014
UPC:	0888574113100
Original Release:	1944
Rating:	NR
Source:	Warner Archives
Presentation:	[Full Frame]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:35:00
Sales rank:	4,283

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dick Powell	Philip Marlowe
Anne Shirley	Ann Grayle
Claire Trevor	Mrs. Grayle
Otto Kruger	Amthor
Mike Mazurki	Moose Malloy
Miles Mander	Mr. Grayle
Douglas Walton	Marriott
Don Douglas	Lt. Randall
Ralf Harolde	Dr. Sonderborg
Esther Howard	Mrs. Florian
John Indrisano	Chauffeur
Jack Carr	Short Guy
Shimen Ruskin	Elevator Operator
Ernie Adams	Bartender,Bartender
Dewey Robinson	The Boss
Larry Wheat	Butler
Sam Finn	Headwaiter
Bernice Ahi	Dancer
Donald Kerr	Taxi Driver
Paul Phillips	Det. Nulty
Ralph Dunn	Detective
George Anderson	Detective
Paul Hilton	Boy
Lawrence Wheat	Butler
Stanley Andrews	Actor
Roy Webb	Composer

Technical Credits

John Paxton

Edward Dmytryk	Director
John Paxton	Screenwriter
Adrian Scott	Producer
Vernon L. Walker	Special Effects,Special Effects
Sid Rogell	Executive Producer
James G. Stewart	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Raymond Chandler didn't invent hard-boiled detective fiction, but his gritty tales featuring private eye Philip Marlowe represent the genre's apotheosis, and Murder, My Sweet is arguably the best screen adaptation of a Marlowe adventure, rivaled only by The Big Sleep. Based on a 1940 Chandler novel (Farewell, My Lovely), Murder opens with the cynical, world-weary Marlowe (former crooner Dick Powell in his career-changing role) reluctantly accepting a commission from hulking gangster Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki), who's looking for his missing girlfriend. This job brings the smooth-talking shamus into contact with murderers and blackmailers, gets him strung out on drugs, and very nearly costs him his life. Powell, perhaps best known for his warbling in such memorable Busby Berkeley musicals as 42nd Street, is surprisingly effective as Marlowe; the same can be said of leading lady Claire Trevor, here attempting the first in a long string of femme fatale roles. John Paxton's screenplay stays relatively faithful to the novel and preserves quite a bit of Chandler's terse dialogue. To a great extent the direction of Edward Dmytryk relies on the narrative and cinematographic techniques that would become trademarks of the then emerging film noir style. Innumerable private-eye films that come later owe a great deal of their form and substance to Murder, My Sweet. Chandler himself thought this film the best cinematic adaptation of one of his stories, and 60 years later it still ranks among the very best murder mysteries Hollywood has created.

Barnes & Noble - Ed Hulse

Edward Dmytryk's sharp, skillfully made noir arguably captures the wit and verbal fluency of Raymond Chandler's style more faithfully than any of the other films made from his books. One of the key early noirs, it revived the career of Powell, who was by then eager to escape his choir-boy image. Through the use of voice-over narration, the film is able to retain the writer's vision of rot beneath the cheery surfaces of the City of Angels, as the sardonic detective keeps up a running commentary on the far from angelic gallery of characters. While his disdain is evenly spread, he reserves his greatest contempt for Otto Kruger's quack "psychic advisor," a precursor to New Age con artists of more modern vintage. Hired by a Frankenstein-like ex-con to find his old girl friend, Powell's Marlowe seems to either get cold-cocked or drugged in every other scene, a state of affairs he comes to regard with bemused detachment. A sequence in which Marlowe has been fed some malign psychoactive substance now seems especially funny due to the now less-than-frightening special effects. Unlike most noirs, in which the protagonist is overwhelmed by a nightmarish sense of disorientation, Chandler's detective has the wit of the only sane man in a world gone mad. Powell is perfect as the snarky, semi-tough hero, and Claire Trevor makes a slyly elusive femme fatale.

All Movie Guide - Michael Costello