FAREWELL, MY LOVELY (1944, 1975)

I watched these two adaptations of the Chandler novel on consecutive nights, and then quickly skimmed the novel for good measure.

As he was wont to do Chandler created the novel from short stories he had previously written, in this instance no less than three of them.  These stories become in the novel two cases which Marlowe is working on which appear to be unrelated but of course turn out not to be.  It's to Chandler's credit that he managed to connect them without relying on mere coincidence.

In the more memorable case, Marlowe is helping an ex-con Moose Malloy track down 'his little Velma' who he is still in love with despite her not writing to him or visiting him whilst he was serving time.

In the other case, Marlowe is trying to get to the bottom of two related mysteries; who killed a guy called Marriott, and who stole a jade necklace belonging to Helen Grayle, the young and beautiful wife of a much older, but rich, man.

Marlowe eventually works out that Velma and Helen are one and the same, and that she killed Marriott in order to keep her secret past hidden.  

In a memorable climactic scene set in Marlowe's apartment, he accuses Helen of Marriott's murder, before Moose, who is hiding in the apartment, confronts her.

Along the way we meet several villainous characters, notably Jules Amthor, a dodgy 'psychic consultant', and Laird Brunette, a powerful mobster/gambler who has the local police in his pocket.  

Unusually for a Chandler novel there's also Anne Riordan, an attractive and smart young woman, who is not connected to the plot but who provides Marlowe with a love interest.  Every scene between the two of them in the novel is a delight.  

I was particularly taken with this passage: "She came back with the glass and her fingers cold from holding the cold glass touched mine and I held them for a moment and then let them go slowly as you let go of a dream when you wake with the sun in your face and you have been in an enchanted valley.  She flushed and went back to her chair and sat down and made a lot of business of arranging herself in it.".

I don't think either the novel or the plot is Chandler's finest work (the way in which Helen is supposed to have killed Marriott strikes me as highly implausible, for instance) but Moose, as a kind of gentle giant (albeit one who makes a habit of casually killing people), is a great character.

The screenwriters in both films have Marlowe recount the story in flashback so that they can sprinkle the film with some of Chandler's great descriptive writing.  For example, both films use the novel's description of the Grayle residence: "The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace ... and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building. ".

Naturally they also streamline or remove a lot of secondary goings-on in the novel (some weird stuff about marijuana cigarettes for example) but both make more significant alterations, some understandable, some less so.

The 1944 film ditches the Brunette character totally, as well as an early and unnecessary killing by Moose.  It also integrates Anne into the story by making her Helen's step-daughter.

The climactic scene is moved from Marlowe's apartment to a more cinematically interesting beach house, but then unfortunately it is ruined by the inclusion of both Anne and her father, making for an unnecessarily messy and somewhat ludicrous conclusion to the mystery.

However I have to give credit to the screenwriter for writing a line of dialogue which made me laugh and which I don't think is in the novel.  At one point Helen says "I'm very attracted to men" to which Marlowe drily replies "I'm sure they try to meet you halfway".

The 1975 film makes even more radical changes to the novel.

For a start Anne is gone completely, which much as I like her does make sense - she is a superfluous character, who is too young to be opposite the 58-year old Robert Mitchum as Marlowe, and her presence would undermine the neo-noir vibe the film is going for.   

Rather bizarrely Jules Amthor is now Mrs Amthor, who runs a brothel  - this has some logic to it, in that making Velma a prostitute does give Helen a stronger motive for wanting to keep her past a secret.

Less good is that the film throws in some new scenes simply for people to get shot or get shot at, and invents an unnecessary new minor character, Tommy Ray.

Worst of all though, is that Marlowe in this version is so sleepy he doesn't solve the mystery.  So in the climactic scene (now set on a gambling boat belonging to Brunette) he doesn't get to accuse Helen of anything, and Moose finally catching up with her is purely accidental.  

One of the deficiencies of the novel is that we never get to learn much about Moose and Velma's relationship and how it leads to him ending up in prison.  Neither film is inclined to do much with this either - this seems especially criminal in the case of the 1975 film which completely wastes Charlotte Rampling as Helen.  

So to wrap up, which is the better adaptation?

Well, the 1944 version has the merit (in my eyes) of being in black-and-white, and therefore being more atmospheric.  It also has a better director in Edward Dmytryk who adds some nice visual touches: the first appearance of Moose in a reflection in Marlowe's office window for example, or a nightmarish dream sequence when Marlowe is drugged.  

I also like that Anne is in the film to provide some romance as well as an upbeat final sequence even if it is a rather silly one.  

Unfortunately it suffers from William Powell being horribly miscast as Marlowe.

Whereas Mitchum was born to play Marlowe even if he is rather too old for the part by 1975.  It is also to the film's benefit that the actor playing Moose really looks the part.

But although the film is stylish in a languorous way, neither the director nor the screenwriter seem that interested in the mystery element of the plot so that one comes away from it quite confused as to what has being going on.  

And although Chandler once said that when he couldn't think of how to progress the plot he would have a guy come through the door with a gun I don't think he would approve of all the shooting that has been added throughout simply to liven things up.

It's quite something that Chandler wrote a more than adequate climax to the story which both films manage to botch so badly.

So although both adaptations are watchable in their different ways, neither is wholly satisfactory, but of the two the one I am more likely to watch again is the 1944 version, if only because it sticks more closely to the novel.