martin-fennell 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

inspectors71 If it weren't for the always watchable Robert Mitchum, the cool clothes, the lumbering Detroitmobiles, and the smoke and booze flowing like a river, Dick Richards' Farewell, My Lovely would collapse from the clichés, the incoherences, and the feeling that the movie is visually dark to add atmosphere while hiding the fact that the movie was made 30+ years after the book was published.I tried to get mad at this mess, but I just couldn't. It felt cheap, but paying attention to that basset hound of a man, Robert Mitchum, make Charlotte Rampling's greedy whore laugh, a nice touch indeed.I saw FML when it came out in the summer of 1975, and I lucked on it when a senior of mine said she had a couple boxes of VHS tapes that her mom wanted gone. I took 'em, and there was Mitchum on the box cover, looking tough, with a curl of smoke pooling under the brim of his fedora. Look at that! The movie--or Raymond Chandler--brings out the turn of phrase in the hacks among us.

Murtaza Ali '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".

slightlymad22 Continuing my attempt to go through all of Sly's filmography in order, I settled down to watch "Farewell My Lovely" tonight. Plot In A Paragraph: Set in 1941, Private Eye Philip Marlowe's (Robert Nitchum) attempts to locate Velma, a former dancer at a seedy nightclub and the girlfriend of Moose Malloy (Jack O Halloran) a criminal just out of prison. Marlowe finds that once he has taken the case, events conspire to put him in dangerous situations, and he is forced to follow a confusing trail of untruths and double-crosses before he is able to locate Velma.Quite a bit in to the opening credits, Sly gets 'Co starring' billing after Joe Spinnell (Gazzo from "Rocky") and an introducing credit for Jack O Halloran (Non from "Superman" and "Superman 2") Sly doesn't appear until 47 minutes in, has a couple of scenes and doesn't have any dialogue. So getting a Co starring credit is generous to say the least. There is a lot to like in "Farewell My Lovely" and it is a movie I would own, even without it being part of my Sly collection. A great voice over (Something missing from a lot of modern day movies) by Mitchum, O Halloran is imposing and intimidating as Moose, and Harry Dean Stanton has a great role too.I was talking to Ridgo in the Lords Of Flatbush thread about 'Flatbush' being a soothing movie, helping us nod off if we have a touch of insomnia. "Farewell" is another to add to that list, just lay down and listen to Mitchum's voice-over it is very calming.It has a few problems with certain scenes, but that is the fault of director Dick Richards, not the cast. It's easy to see why he didn't have a long career as a director. Mitchum not only punched him, he dragged him on to Pacific Coast Highway and said "Let's see if you can direct traffic." Then on "March Or Die" both Gene Hackman and Carherine Deneuvue both hit him, then in 1986 Burt Reynolds knocked him out cold whilst filming "Heat" in Las Vegas. Six Movies and five punch outs!! Says it all.