Comparing the "Mitchum Marlowes": Farewell My Lovely(1975) and The Big Sleep(1978)

The 70s were famously a time of new, youthful, gritty and radical American films, sometimes with an "indie feel"(Five Easy Pieces) sometimes with big budget production values(The Exorcist, Jaws.) There were more bonafide classics than you could keep up with(The Godfathers, The Sting, Network) -- a lot of good films.

But there were "programmers," too. Movies made with competance but no real ambition for the box office or the critics. They were made to make a little money, get everybody paid, and then go to television. Usually, the scripts were pushed to be good enough to avoid mockery in reviews, and inevitably, good actors were chosen to act in them because, well, Hollywood has a lot of those.

Robert Mitchum was in a good place in the 70's. He wasn't a superstar like Redford or Beatty or Newman or McQueen. He wasn't a new "prestige youth actor" like Nicholson or Pacino.

But he was a survivor of the Golden Age of Hollywood and unlike a number of those guys who got sent to TV shows permanently, he was still bankable for movies. He made a lot of movies in the 70's, often small scale(The Wrath of God, Young Billy Young) but sometimes "important"(Ryan's Daughter by David Lean.)

In being selected to play Philliip Marlowe for the 70;s, Mitchum was taking on a role most memorably played by Bogart in the 40s. But there was this: when Bogart was a star in the 40s and 50s...Robert Mitchum was, too.

So Mitchum's casting in Farewell My Lovely felt JUST RIGHT. He was older than he should have been, but he brought movie history along with him and was still both strong enough looking for some violence and sexy enough to attract women.

Its hard to know when a greenlight was given, but the producers of Farewell My Lovely seemed to be acting on the success of Chinatown in 1974 (both as box office and as a new classic) and Altman's The Long Goodbye(with Elliott Gould as Marlowe) in 1973. Altman's movie didn't do much box office, but got a LOT of ink -- positive reviews, a liking of the film's deconstruction of 40s noir, etc.

Farewell My Lovely (made before twice, once with Dick Powell) was set, like the novel it was taken from, in Los Angeles, and in the forties. Jump ahead: when the same producers elected to make a sequel of this and from perhaps the most famous Marlowe movie of them all -- The Big Sleep" -- they moved the story to 1978 and to LONDON. (Producer Sir Lew Grade seemed to want American stars in British films.)

Cut to the chase: 3 years after the more cheap-ish and grimy Farewell My Lovely, Mitchum actually looks YOUNGER in The Big Sleep. Lots of elements; very stylish 1970s suits and sport coats that make Mitchum look pretty trim; longish 70's hair that helps keep Mitchum more youthful looking than he did with a short hair cut in Farewell My Lovely. And bright, well-lit lighting that flatters Mitchum more than the murk of the Farewell My Lovely photography.

Which Mitchum Marlowe movie is better? Well, some would say "neither. Remaking The Big Sleep was sacrilige and even the Dick Powell Farewell My Lovely ("Murder My Sweet" ) is classic, if for nothing else than making a tough guy out of boyish crooner Dick Powell.(It took.)

But "Mitchum Marlowe to Mitchum Marlowe," the two movies do show checks and balances. I've had reason to watch them back to back on streaming recently so while they are still on my mind, here goes:

Music: FML has a rich, lush, blusey and sad credit theme by David Shire("The Taking of Pelham 123.") Its nostalgic: "you are there" in the late 40s. TBS has an edgy, modern, terse thriller score by Jerry Fielding, a preferred composer of Sam Peckinpah . Peckinpah reportedly browbeat the sentimentalism out of Fielding's score for The Wild Bunch and TBS is nowhere near as emotional and sad as the music fo FML, which gives FML some melancholy and a sense of loss. ADVANTAGE ON MUSIC: Farewell My Lovely.

Cast: FML evidently didn't have much in the budget for names after Mitchum. Only Charlotte Rampling really had a name; the rest of the cast are good, servicable character actors. John Ireland(who had worked in the 40s) evidently lobbied his way into the movie to save his career; he's fine as "the one uncorruptible cop in LA" and Marlowe's ally. The great Harry Dean Stanton(four years before Big Fame in Alien) is the corrupt cop who bugs both Mitchum and Ireland. (These three characters mimic Nicholson and two cops in Chinatown.) The little known actors playing the hulking Moose Malloy and the fat, sadistic Madam were great, visually and acting wise. And there's a VERY little known bit player in a couple of scenes named Sly Stallone...one year before everything changed (indeed he is billed BELOW Joe Spinell, who would be his support in Rocky.) Good players, but rather "small potatoes."

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