Such a frustrating disappointment

Overrated

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This looks like one of those movies that gets better with age. Raymond Chandler is my favourite author, and all the Marlowe books are favourites except Playback. The best two are probably Farewell my lovely and The long goodbye. Age wise, Mitchum was probably better suited to playing Marlowe in the long goodbye. There was a version before this with Dick Powell playing the legendary private eye. Powell up to then had been known as a crooner. This version was called "murder my sweet" in the states, in case the title "farewell my lovely" gave audiences the idea that it was another Powell musical. Both versions are favourites of mine. I'll have to watch the version again to compare. Mitchum is terrific in the lead role. THe rest of the cast are solid. There is a great 1940's atmosphere. fav

Robert Mitchum was a bit long in the tooth when he played Philip Marlowe in this deliberately artificial remake of "Farewell, My Lovely" which, by the mid-seventies, seemed incongruously like a fish out of water. Despite an excellent cast that included Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Harry Dean Stanton, an Oscar-nominated Sylvia Miles and, in his only acting role, the novelist Jim Thompson the film looked and sounded like something of a museum piece. Maybe it needed someone other than the merely workmanlike Dick Richards to breathe some life into it in the way Altman did with the vastly superior "The Long Goodbye". When set beside Polanski's "Chinatown", which appeared the following year, or even the original 1944 version of the same story, this is decidedly second-rate; a fancy dress parade of character actors in search of a story.

"Farewell My lovely" is a pretty good take on Raymond Chandler's novel, and Robert Mitchum makes a great screen Marlowe; he's a little older and a little more weather-beaten than Bogart in the role. Interestingly, Chandler always thought Cary Grant would have been the right choice for the part - who'd have thought? Set around 1940, Marlowe gets involved in two cases that eventually join together. Moose Malloy, played by ex-heavyweight boxer Jack O'Halloran, hires him to find Velma, the girlfriend he hasn't seen in seven years - he's been 'in the can'.Marlowe is also hired to find jewellery belonging to rich old Judge Grayle (Jim Thompson) and his sexy young wife Helen (Charlotte Rampling). The body count mounts as the strands come together and Marlowe expounds his world-weary philosophies on just about everything. The film is peppered with characters that have been dealt a bad hand by life, but they are people Marlowe relates to.It was uncomfortable to get on the wrong side of Mitchum. He seemed to have built in radar that detected any kind of pretence and his comments in an interview with Roger Ebert about the director of the film, Dick Richards, were harsh.He also didn't seem to feel the mystique of Charlotte Rampling, dismissing her, according to Lee Server's biography of Mitchum, as "the chick who did the S&M movie 'The Night Porter'". However Charlotte Rampling, clothed and styled to recall Lauren Bacall, brings an enigmatic quality to her role, the camera loves her in her few short scenes.The film has a similar retro feel to "Chinatown". Both had great scores, and David Shire didn't spare the alto sax creating an evocative work to rival Jerry Goldsmith.Marlowe as played by Mitchum is a guy who knows deep truths about human nature; he's been knocked around and has felt pain - he understands you even if he has to shoot you. It's a quality that works well in this 40-year old movie.

'Farewell, My Lovely' is the second adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel of the same name--the first being the 1944 film 'Murder, My Sweet, starring Dick Powell and Claire Trevor, which was criticized for leaving out some of the controversial parts of the text from the Chandler's novel.In the classic neo-noir 'Farewell, My Lovely', the great American actor Robert Mitchum plays Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe in arguably his greatest screen performance of all time. Mitchum plays Chandler to a tee (even overshadowing Humphrey Bogart's remarkable portrayal of Chandler's private eye in The Big Sleep) and it can be said with great certainty that Mitchum though the virtue of this sublime performance cemented his place in history as the definitive face of hard-boiled fiction in cinema.As for Rampling, she gives us the quintessential femme fatale in Helen Grayle. Helen is a sight for the sore eyes but she is every bit as deadly as a black widow spider for her hapless victims.Farewell, My Lovely is an essential viewing for film noir enthusiasts as well as for the fans of Mitchum and Rampling.For more on cinema, please visit my film blog "A Potpourri of Vestiges".