Murder, My Sweet, 1944 – Heart Of Noir
Mike Bayer www.facebook.com
https://heartofnoir.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/color-logo-refined-transparency-e1657978045217-150x150.png
Heart of Noir
While its plot isn’t quite as convoluted as that other Chandler adaptation two years later (The Big Sleep), Edward Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet still requires attentive viewing to keep on top of all its moving parts. Considered by some to be the greatest Philip Marlowe portrayal on film (Bogart fans strongly disagree), Dick Powell plays Chandler’s iconic private eye with all the wisecracks and cynicism a viewer would expect but accompanied by a vulnerability (unusual for a hard-boiled genre) that makes the character’s humanity and likability shine. Hired by the mentally underdeveloped Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to find his missing girlfriend Velma whom Moose hasn’t seen since his incarceration, Marlowe embarks on an investigative odyssey that introduces him to an alcoholic widow (Esther Howard), a fake journalist (Anne Shirley), a wealthy jade collector (Miles Mander), a gold-digging second wife (Claire Trevor), a psychic healer (Otto Kruger), and a diabolical doctor (Ralph Harolde), among many other encounters and altercations. In a film loaded with visual and storytelling inventiveness, the highlight may be Marlowe’s visits from “the black pit” whenever he gets knocked out, which happens frequently but never as dramatically as the nightmare and prolonged recovery he suffers when injected with a drug meant to keep him trapped in a sanitarium: spiraling through space, running through floating doors, waking up in a half-consciousness of static smoke superimposed across his bedroom (“Now, let’s see you do something really tough. Like puttin’ your pants on”).