Those are the first words we hear from Raymond Chandler\u2019s knight errant private eye Phillip Marlowe in director Dick Richards\u2019s 1975 adaptation of Farewell, My Lovely<\/em>, delivered via voice-over in the inimitable, boozy bedroom drawl of the film\u2019s star, Robert Mitchum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mitchum was 57 years old and he looked every minute of it; a shambling, still-handsome wreck whose trademark sleepy eyes were sinking deeper by the day. Hard living and middle age had brought a ruined gravity to the insouciant Hollywood bad boy. He was coming off the performance of his life two years earlier as a Wily Loman-esque Boston gangster in The Friends of Eddie Coyle<\/em><\/a>. He\u2019d also just been fired by Otto Preminger from a film called Rosebud<\/em> for drunk and disorderly conduct. Pushing 60 and still a problem child, Mitchum had been replaced on that picture by Peter O\u2019Toole, a move the star described as \u201clike replacing Ray Charles with Helen Keller.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mitchum was much older than the Marlowe of Chandler\u2019s novels, an angle director Richards leaned into with his deliberately elegiac approach. Noir was all the rage in the early \u201870s \u2013 the dual disillusionments of Watergate and Vietnam probably had something to do with it. Robert Altman had just dropped Marlowe into the Me Decade with 1973\u2019s The Long Goodbye<\/em><\/a>, an iconoclastic effort far more faithful than it might have seemed on the surface, while a year later Roman Polanski\u2019s Chinatown<\/em><\/a> took the genre to New Hollywood heights and Oscar glory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Farewell, My Lovely<\/em> was Old Hollywood all the way, a stately production shot strictly according to the styles of the era in which it took place. Director Richards expressly forbid any zoom lenses or contemporary camera tricks. The only concessions to modern times were the color film stock, a few curse words and occasional flashes of nudity, mostly for marketing reasons. Towering over it all was an industry monument in the flesh, who had starred in one of the greatest of all noirs, Out of the Past<\/em>. Even the clothes were classic Hollywood, with Mitchum spending the whole movie in a costume department suit worn in 1940 by Victor Mature \u2013 his name was still sewn into it \u2013 and constantly complaining to the director about having to wear \u201cMature\u2019s old, farted-up suit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chandler\u2019s book had been filmed in 1944 as Murder, My Sweet<\/em>, with Dick Powell as Marlowe. (Mitchum told the producers they should just re-release that one, then they could all go to the beach.) In it, the detective is hired by hulking ex-con Moose Malloy to find the love of his life, Velma, who disappeared during his six year prison stretch. There\u2019s something to do with $80,000 and a missing Jade necklace, and in typical Chandler fashion this involves gangsters, crooked cops and a judge\u2019s wife (Charlotte Rampling, fresh from The Night Porter<\/em><\/a>) who shoots Marlowe \u201ca smile I could feel in my hip pocket.\u201d Moose is probably more trouble than he\u2019s worth, but our hero can\u2019t help but got to bat for the big lug, explaining that \u201cEver since I saw that movie King Kong<\/em>, I’ve been a sucker for any gorilla who falls in love with a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Boxer Jack O\u2019Halloran made his film debut as Moose (he\u2019d go on to play the mute Kryptonian baddie Non in Superman II<\/em>) and he has a delightful, monosyllabic rapport with Mitchum, who\u2019s obviously tickled pink by his massive presence. There\u2019s a wonderfully slimy turn from Harry Dean Stanton as a racist cop on the take, and the sickly judge married to Rampling\u2019s character is none other than legendary pulp novelist Jim Thompson, who was so gravely ill Mitchum didn\u2019t think he was going to make it through the shooting day. Marlowe spends the movie\u2019s midsection being menaced by a couple of goons played by Joe Spinell and some young actor named Sylvester Stallone. (Given that Arnold Schwarzenegger had one of his first roles as a thug in The Long Goodbye<\/em>, beating up on Phillip Marlowe was apparently a prerequisite of \u201880s action movie superstardom.) Sylvia Miles scored an Oscar nomination for her work as an alcoholic informant whose visits from Marlowe turn into melancholy benders and sing-a-longs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s the sadness of scenes like those that makes the picture special. Director Richards started out as a still photographer for Look<\/em> and Life<\/em> magazines, and there are times when Farewell, My Lovely<\/em> is a little too focused on its period production design, a little too expensive in replicating the aesthetic of old movies that were better for being shot on the cheap. What\u2019s so affecting about this film is not the rain-slicked streets or neon signs, but rather Mitchum\u2019s heartsick sighs at every dead body he encounters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His Marlowe isn\u2019t the unflappable wiseass that Humphrey Bogart played in The Big Sleep<\/em>, but rather an older, sadder guy who can\u2019t help but do the right thing and always ends up with nothing to show for it but a broken heart. Chandler envisioned the character as the last hurrah for chivalry in a fallen world. In Mitchum\u2019s exhausted eyes we can see how much those principles have cost him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Farewell, My Lovely” is streaming on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>, Peacock<\/a>, Kanopy<\/a>, Hoopla<\/a>, Tubi<\/a>, PlutoTV<\/a>, and more<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/farewell2-1024x568.jpg\")
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