Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell) is hired by an imposing hoodlum (Mike Mazurki) to find his missing lover.
While on the hunt for this woman, Marlowe is drawn into the orbit of a wealthy family with an interest in keeping Marlowe from finding his quarry…
Following The Big Sleep, I was on a Marlowe kick.
I had heard good things about this film, and after The Big Sleep, I was keen to get a different (and hopefully more straightforward) take on the shamus.
I also had a history with star Dick Powell.
As a child I had a collection of cassette tapes of old detective radio shows from the Forties.
Two of those shows, Richard Diamond and Rogues Gallery, starred Powell. I gravitated toward Richard Diamond because of the humor, but Powell radiated a charisma and charm that made me return to those episodes over the others.
I had no knowledge of Powell’s screen work, or of his early screen persona as a musical comedy star.
That context is crucial because this film was Powell’s attempt to change his screen image. It succeeded so much that he would thereafter become a leading man of noir.
Visually, this movie is what people think of with classic film noir: lots of extreme angles and chiaroscuro.
The film opens on a dramatic overhead shot of an interrogation room, where a blindfolded Marlowe is surrounded by police officers. It is a mission statement that the film continues to pay off, using the influence of German expressionism to develop a visual language for Raymond Chandler’s evocative prose.
Take Moose’s introduction, in which he looms out of the darkness as a reflection in Marlowe’s office window. It is a foreboding opening that turns him from a simple leg-breaker into a force of nature.
One of the most effective sequences in the film is literal nightmare, in which Marlowe imagines himself running through multiple doors while being chased by a man with a hypodermic needle.
As with the Bogart version, I had to re-watch the movie to pay attention to the plot - it is longwinded, but it at least resolves.
With The Big Sleep, the attraction is the interplay between the characters. The repartee is not as unique as the Hawks film, but it is still effective - and Powell is great.
I will not say his performance is as iconic as Bogart - and as far as star charisma goes, Powell is no Bogie.
But that is no deficit here.
Whereas Bogart seems effortless and always thinking on his feet, Powell seems more human and fallible.
While smart, Powell’s Marlowe is far less confident, and is shown to be more vulnerable. He gets tortured and appears to be genuinely traumatised by the experience.
His Marlowe also has an air of economic precariousness which adds to that lack of confidence - he does not seem to have a choice to turn down Moose when the giant appears in his office.
Like all good comic performers, Powell underplays the dramatic scenes. And his comic touch works as the exasperated release of a man in over his head.
He gets a lot of lovely bits of business - his brief dance as he wanders through the cavernous mansion; lighting a cigarette on a Cupid statue; aping Moose’s monosyllabic voice.
Powell’s Marlowe may go through hell in this movie, but he seems to take joy wherever he can get it.
While he is not in the movie for long, I was struck by the emotional impact of Moose’s love for Velma.
It is rare to see a stooge take such a central role, particularly as a client, and it gave the movie a unique pathos and tension.
Played by professional wrestler Mike Mazurki, he is slightly wooden, but in a way that works. The character appears to be slightly punch drunk, and prone to sudden shifts in temper.
There is something terrifyingly pathetic about him. He is a more violent spiritual sibling to Laird Cregar’s similarly obsessive policeman in I Wake Up Screaming.
The finale is an overstuffed series of monologues as the plot is finally explained, but it is made up for by the quiet farce of the final scene: Marlowe, temporarily blinded, is unaware his love interest is in the room as he rhapsodises about how she saved his life.
It is a relatively light-hearted close, but it marks a suitable redemption for our put-upon hero - blundering forward into the unknown with his heart on his sleeve.
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