Raymond Chandler

  • Murder, My Sweet (1944)

    Murder, My Sweet (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2019) Aw yeah, pump that undiluted film noir stuff right into my veins, because I can’t get enough of that genre and Murder, My Sweet is as pure as it gets. Adapted from Raymond Chandler’s more innocuous-sounding Farewell, My Lovely, this is a film that goes right for the archetypes of film noir, what with the private investigator, femme fatale, precious McGuffin, criminal figures, gunplay and complicated plotting. The addition of a nice girl thankfully lands the movie in happy-ending territory without necessarily sabotaging what comes before. I had a bit of trouble accepting Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe, but was gradually won over by his sardonic humour, reasonable stature and flashes of vulnerability—the shadow of Bogart looms large of the character, but Powell’s take on it is excellent. Alongside him, Anne Shirley is as lovely as she needs to be as the only rock of morality in an otherwise gray-on-gray tale. Claire Trevor is ideal as a femme fatale, while Mike Mazurki is a presence as a dim-witted enforcer. Perhaps the best thing about the film on a moment-by-moment basis is the delicious tough-guy dialogue, played unironically given the film’s place in early noir history. Murder, My Sweet is, unsurprisingly, one of the most influential films in the noir canon—it had the good fortune of appearing on screens in 1944, alongside a class as distinguished as Double Indemnity, Laura, The Woman in the Windows and (arguably) Gaslight, a time when noir was gaining traction as a specific thing (even if defining it took another two years on another continent). There have been many, many imitators and some of them may even have surpassed Murder, My Sweet. But the original is still more than worth a watch.

  • Double Indemnity (1944)

    Double Indemnity (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, June 2018) Like many, I like film noir a lot, and Double Indemnity is like mainlining a strong hit of the stuff. Pure undiluted deliciousness, with black-and-white cinematography, unusual investigator, femme fatale, crackling dialogue, strong narration and bleak outlook. Here, the focus on insurance agents trying to figure out a murder mystery is unusual enough to be interesting, while the Los Angeles setting is an instant classic. Fred MacMurray is a great anti-hero (morally flawed, but almost unexplainably likable along the way), Barbara Stanwyck is dangerously alluring and Edward G. Robinson is the moral anchor of the film. Double Indemnity does have that moment-to-moment watching compulsion that great movies have—whether it’s the details of an insurance firm, dialogue along the lines of the classic “There’s a speed limit in this state” exchange, a trip at the grocery store, or the careful composition of a noir film before they even had realized that there was a film noir genre. Double Indemnity is absorbing viewing, and a clear success for director Billy Wilder, gifted with a Raymond Chandler script from a James M. Cain novel.