MovieChat Forums > Farewell, My Lovely (1975) Discussion > Marlowe Cheats with a Sick Man’s Wife in...

Marlowe Cheats with a Sick Man’s Wife in Front of Him in His Own House?


She threw him a look he caught in his hip pocket.
She asked him to come sit by her.
Her dress was poured on her like syrup.

We get it: she’s sexy and she wants him.
Here, now.
What man says no?

Well the vamp is married, bub — to a powerful judge, whose house you’re sitting in drinking his booze. And kissing and pawing his wife, even after he busts in and stares. Do you not see the hurtful expression? Nor care about disrespecting him this way, in his own home?

Thought you had principles, Marlowe. Trustworthy, we thought. We might bring you along to protect an effeminate n’er-do-well and his ill-gotten 15 grand, but we can’t trust you with a client’s girlfriend on a couch in the home of her ailing husband?

“What does he expect.” She dismisses her till-death partner with a neck drop and more kissing. I can tell you that I expected more from the legendary detective than that.

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Now you know why he's legendary.

It's pulp/film noir. Not Dragnet.

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He's a private eye not a priest.

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I wonder: was this scene in Raymond Chandler's original novel?

I must admit that Marlowe is held out as a very noble, principled man in his work -- and pushes back on seduction attempts by a blowsy middle-aged woman(Sylvia Miles) in this film and two attractive but crazy sisters in "The Big Sleep."

Still, here -- unlike as with Miles, Rampling is young, sober and beautiful, and not crazy like the gals in The Big Sleep.

Marlowe's "got the take" on this marriage. The husband is old and infirm. He may be a powerful judge, but he's likely a corrupt one, and Marlowe knows that, too. The judge has connections to hide. So why not sample the wife?

That said, yeah, its a fairly out of character moment for Mitchum's Marlowe. Again...I wonder if it was in the book?

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