Opening in 1944, "Murder, My Sweet" was based on the Raymond Chandler novel, "Farewell, My Lovely." It met instant critical acclaim and represented a turning point in star Dick Powell's career. Up until then, he'd been mostly known for musical comedies, but from there on he was one of the leading noir actors of the decade. Also starring, and playing more to type, were bad girl Claire Trevor and feisty babe in the woods, Anne Shirley (lamentably her last film). The title of the film was originally "Farewell, My Lovely" on release but was later changed to ensure audiences didn't mistake it for another one of Powell's damn musical comedies. Excepting that minor tweak, it remained faithful to the novel and carried over many of Chandler's signature stylings, like the ripe dialogue and the flashback first-person narrative. It also boasted a visual look that set a new standard for the genre.
The film starts off with Powell, as Phillip Marlowe, being interrogated in a police station while blinded by a bandage. Here we get that famous noir look and all its iconic elements. There's the high-contrast black and white photography, lots of shadows, thick cigarette smoke, and more fedoras than you can count (at least when drunk during a late night viewing). We also get the highly stylized dialogue that in better hands sounded tough as nails but here sounds, well, puzzling. "My bank account was crawling under a duck." Huh? "My mind felt like a plumber's handkerchief." I'm sorry, what does that even mean?
The dialogue could've been better, but what about the plot? During the opening, we're taken by flashback to the meat of the story where Marlowe is approached by Moose Malloy, played by wrestler Mike Mazurski, to find an old girlfriend named Velma. Always a Velma. Things quickly complicate when the Velma angle leads him to jewel swindlers and Claire Trevor's Helen Grayle, who's trying to buy back a rare jewel stolen by said swindlers. Helen also has a rich older husband from who's jewel collection she dabbles in, and a troublesome stepdaughter Ann (Anne Shirley) who knows a good gold digger when she sees one and doesn't like it one bit. So Marlowe is lead along into looking for the lost jewel while trying to suss out everyone's conflicting motives. In other words, who's trying to screw who?
Like all detective thrillers, the plot gets more elaborate with many twists and red herrings thrown in. It's somewhat confusing on first viewing and can be a bit of a muddle, but we assume it'll all make sense in the end, and it does. As long as you accept the insane maliciousness of whoever the catalyst is. All in all, it's fairly standard.
It'll probably come as no surprise that Claire Trevor's Helen Grayle is the source of that insane maliciousness. From the very first moment we see her, she surreptitiously flashes a little leg at Marlowe right in front of her husband, and her eyes have that cynical "we're playing the same game" wink. She's a great femme fatale, and even though her character's motives don't always make sense, she sells it well. Otto Kruger plays another one of the baddies, some sort of doctor who abducts Marlowe and holds him in a drug-induced delirium after Marlowe gets a little too close to the truth. He acts exactly like you'd expect an Otto would. It should be noted here, Raymond Chandler had a way of disposing of his femme fatales that was...um...interesting. Each one got a slug in the belly. Every one, shot in the stomach, and Claire Trevor is no exception. So this Chandler guy, you could say he had issues.
Powell's performance I found not quite as effective. You could see the outlines of his characterization that would work so well in later noirs like "Johnny O'Clock" and "Cry Danger," but he hadn't pinned it all down in this first performance. He had too much of a hop and a skip in his step from his musical comedy days and lacked the tough edge the role required. The over-ripe, at times silly, dialogue didn't help. Also, there's the matter of his physical appearance. In a suit he looks great , but there's one scene where Trevor comes in his apartment and sees him with his shirt off. She tells him, "You've got a nice build for a detective." He does not have a nice build for a detective. Not the broadest shoulders in the world, let's just say. Keep the coat on, Dick.
Of the supporting players, Mazurski and Shirley stand out. Mazurski's Moose Malloy has a dumb persistence that's rather touching. You start to see why someone would go along with the big lug despite his utter lack of charm and adverbs. Shirley plays her Ann Grayle with a spunky innocence that, while she wasn't born of this underworld, she could surprisingly hold her own while in it. She's like a mix of Ann Blyth and Teresa Wright. Seeing her performance makes me seriously regret the onetime child star retired after this film.
There's one final stylistic element that shouldn't go without mention, a surrealistic sequence showing Marlowe in his previously mentioned drug-induced delirium. It wasn't unusual to see hallucinogenic touches like this in the noirs that followed, but not to this extent. The whole sequence was long and elaborate, and unfortunately heavy-handed. Marlowe's hallucinations were shot so literally, like the bit with the doorways, that it was more silly than weird. And the cheap gauze over the camera, appearing and disappearing to illustrate his going in and out of delirium, was half-assed.
One more criticism, and then I'll go back to my cave. There was a kiss-cute scene in the end between Shirley and Powell, where the still blind Marlowe at first doesn't know Shirley's sitting next to him in the back of their cab before she leans in for a kiss. The problem is, Shirley's father had just been killed moments after killing her stepmother. You'd think she'd be a little too traumatized to be thinking about locking lips with Powell, at least not in the funny/cutesy way they did. Either they were made of stronger stuff back then, or Hollywood put a little too much Hollywood in a Hollywood ending.
