Farewell, My Lovely

Fine adaptation of Chandler's novel (which had served as plot fodder for The Falcon Takes Over only two years earlier), evocatively creating a seedy, sordid world of shifting loyalties and unseen evil as Marlowe goes in search of the young and missing Velma at the urgent behest of Moose Malloy (Mazurki in fine form), a brutish ex-con unaware that the girl he left behind when he went to jail has metamorphosed into the dangerously duplicitous Claire Trevor (another marvellous performance). Powell is surprisingly good as Marlowe, certainly more faithful to the writer's conception than Bogart was in The Big Sleep, while the supporting cast make the most of John Paxton's superb dialogue. And Harry Wild's chiaroscuro camerawork is the true stuff of noir. Although released in America as Murder My Sweet, the film was in fact originally screened there as Farewell, My Lovely.