I’m a sucker for flashback noirs, I admit it. Give me D.O.A and I can watch it over and over again, though sometimes the dialog gets too syrupy. Give me Murder, My Sweet, with William Powell, and you can wipe the drool from my lips because I’ll be too busy watching Powell’s Philip Marlowe, private detective, getting squeezed like a tangerine by Mike Mazurki (as Moose Malloy), while Moose gets squeezed by memories of Velma (Claire Trevor), who Moose he hires a reluctant Marlowe to find. Moose may be short a third rail but he can squeeze real good. And Marlowe keeps getting squeezed by everybody, which makes this version of Raymond Chandler’s Farwell, My Lovely, a knockout punch. Powell, a musical comedy actor who yearned for more dramatic roles, bit off all he could chew with the role, and, aside from Robert Mitchum, makes the perfect onscreen Marlowe. This movie set the bar for noir movies to follow, with its snappy dialog, dreamy visuals, and characters that moved between dark and light with their desires in the urban environment. I became a Raymond Chandler, Rex Stout fan, having read their novels, between midnight and dawn, while working at Casablanca records as a night guard back in the 1970s in New York City. Now if Hollywood can actually do a decent Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin movie, I’d be aces.
