Murder, My Sweet | Dmytryk’s 1944 Film Noir Classic, Philip Marlowe
Murder My Sweet encyclopedia encyclopeadia britannica article
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Murder, My Sweet, American film noir, released in 1944, that was notable as the screen debut of author Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled, world-weary detective Philip Marlowe. It was based on Chandler’s 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely. (Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.) The
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Encyclopedia Britannica
Murder, My Sweet, American film noir, released in 1944, that was notable as the screen debut of author Raymond Chandler’s hard-boiled, world-weary detective Philip Marlowe. It was based on Chandler’s 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely.

(Read Martin Scorsese’s Britannica essay on film preservation.)

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The cynical, smart-talking detective Marlowe (played by Dick Powell) is hired by an ex-con to track down the girlfriend he lost touch with while serving time in prison. In the meantime, Marlowe also takes on the seemingly innocuous job of accompanying a man to pay a ransom for some stolen jewels. It does not go according to plan, however, and the man ends up dead. Later, Marlowe is visited by a woman claiming to be a reporter. She questions him about a stolen necklace, and it is soon revealed that the necklace had belonged to her stepmother and that it was the item being held for ransom. Marlowe, feeling somewhat responsible for his client’s death, agrees to find the necklace. The case, however, proves much more complicated than imagined. Throughout the film Marlowe navigates a web of criminality and deceit filled with assorted debased characters, including the requisite beautiful femme fatale. Marlowe is even drugged and interned in an insane asylum, where he suffers through a nightmare of drug-induced hallucinations. In the end he discovers that the cases of the missing girlfriend and of the stolen necklace are not as separate as they first appeared.