MURDER, MY SWEET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 336, 30 November 1945, Page 18

MURDER, MY SWEET

(RKO-Radio)

OR some reason, this film has been released in several parts of the world under the name of Farewell, My Lovely, the title of the novel

by Raymond Chandler on which it is based. It has also apparently been called Murder, My Sweet at one time in the U.S. and Farewell, My Lovely at another, and for the life of me I can’t see any ‘basic distinction to justify the consequent confusion. Under either title, however, the film is a tough and energetic thriller of the Double Indemnity school, but with enough of the marks of the old-style gangster melodrama upon it to give it an air of intelligent parody. I would suggest that you do not cramp your appreciation of the acting, the direction, and the sideplay by making too strenuous an effort to follow the plot. I gave up the attempt myself fairly early in the piece. I think I know who Valma Valento, the missing showgirl, was and why Moose Malloy, the exconvict with a child’s mind and a giant’s body, was so keen to find her and so upset when he did; I am fairly clear in my mind about who bumped off the fellow in the car, and why the old millionaire’s daughter (Anne Shirley) was so angry with her sexy, blonde step-mother (Claire Trevor). But I am still largely in the dark about that priceless jade necklace; and even though this is a story in which nobody can be expected to behave with restraint, I doubt if there was sufficient logical reason for the unfortunate detective-hero (Dick Powell) to be derided one moment and courted the next (which is a mild way.of putting it), to be slapped down, stood up, slugged over the head with a blackjack, smacked over the face with a pistol, pumped full of cocaine and whisky, and to end up half-blinded by gun-scorch but apparently happy and certainly full of spirits. Still, it does not really matter much why these things happen; it is sufficient that they do happen-and that they are enacted with verve and verisimilitude in an atmosphere which continually suggests that although something horribly sinister has just taken place it is nothing to what is coming next, The director of Murder, My Sweeta gentleman with the engaging name of Dmytryk-carfies realism so far that on several occasions. he ventures outside the purely physical state into the realm of the sub-conscious, showing us what goes on in the mind of the hero when he passes out under the influence of doping and clubbing. These nightmare sequences, done with distorted cameraangles and double-exposure, recall the famous epileptic scene’in Un Carnet Du Bal and some of the weird confections (continued on next page)

{continued from previous page) of the early German school of cinematography. They are perhaps the highlight of ‘the, film; though I should like to speak a warm word of praise for the performance of Dick Powell, who has clearly all along been missing his vocation as an actor by trying to be a singer, and for that of Claire Trevor, who is one of the nicest exponents of feminine nastiness on the screen.