YOU SMELL GREAT. COME ON IN
Marlow, on first meeting Mariott.
YOU BEEN JUDGING A FLOWER SHOW IN HERE MARLOW. IS THAT THE WINNING DAFFODILL WHO JUST WALKED OUT?
Detective Billy Rolfe (Harry Dean Stanton) who arrives as Marriot is leaving Marlowe’s office.
Directed by Dick Richards, Farewell My Lovely stars Robert Mitchum as an aging, world‑weary Philip Marlowe. Set in 1941 Los Angeles but filmed with 1970s melancholy, it’s a deliberately nostalgic neo‑noir that leans into decay, corruption, and the end of an era. Marlowe is hired by Moose Malloy (Jack O’ Halloran), a hulking ex‑con, to find his vanished girlfriend, Velma (Charlotte Rampling). The search leads Marlowe through a maze of brothels, gambling dens, corrupt cops, and Hollywood grotesques. A parallel case involving a stolen jade necklace eventually intersects with Moose’s quest. Velma, now reinvented as a glamorous nightclub singer, has erased her past and will kill to protect her new identity. The story ends in tragedy: Moose dies, Velma dies, and Marlowe is left with nothing but the bitter taste of truth.
One of those rare cases where the remake is marginally better than the original (Murder My Sweet directed by Edward Dmytryk in 1944 with Dick Powell – see ESSAY ONE: 85 Queer Films Made Under the Hays Code), Farewell My Lovely not only keeps the original title of the Raymond Chandler novel, it’s also more faithful to the spirit of the book. Mitchum is marvelous. He’s in practically every scene and he never wears out his welcome. There is a superb moment with an equally down-on-her-luck torch singer Jessie Florian played by Sylvia Miles who received a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for just a few minutes of screen time, mirroring her work in Midnight Cowboy a few years earlier.
And our queer friend Lindsay Marriott (John O’ Leary) is back, still smelling super nice, still being mocked by the straight guys and still doomed to die in the canyons above Malibu.
The gorgeous cinematography is by John Alonzo who, the previous year, had immortalized Los Angeles in Chinatown. The haunting score is by David Shire.
