Classic Movie Review: Murder My Sweet

Murder, My Sweet (1944)
Directed by: Edward Dmytryk.
Written by: John Paxton based on the novel by Raymond Chandler.
Starring: Dick Powell (Philip Marlowe), Claire Trevor (Mrs. Helen Grayle), Anne Shirley (Ann Grayle), Otto Kruger (Jules Amthor), Mike Mazurki (Moose Malloy), Miles Mander (Mr. Grayle), Douglas Walton (Lindsay Marriott), Donald Douglas (Police Lieutenant Randall), Ralf Harolde (Dr. Sonderborg), Esther Howard (Jessie Florian).

In many ways, Edward Dmytryk’s Murder, My Sweet is a prototypical film noir, even if it never quite becomes a great one. It has all the elements of noir, some fine performances, excellent camera work and twisty story that takes several unexpected plot twists. The final scene is a little too lightweight and happy for my taste in noir – which runs darker – and really for any movie based on a Raymond Chandler Marlowe novel – whose endings were always bleaker than this (as it was in the novel, Farewell My Lovely that is the basis for this movie). It’s a fine film noir – and a reasonably good adaptation of Chandler. But it never quite reaches the level of greatness.

I like Roger Ebert’s description of the plot of The Long Goodbye – another Chandler novel turned into a movie in that the “plot can summarized in one sentence or endlessly” – and that’s true of all of Chandler’s novels, where the plots were hugely complex, involved many different characters, and yet somehow all comes together in the end (or at least we think they do – even if Chandler had to admit he didn’t always know what happened). Here, the basic plot involves Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) who comes to find Marlowe after spending a few years in jail. Before he got sent up, we was in love with a girl named Verna – and he wants Marlowe to find her for him. He’s been back to the club she used to work for, and they say they don’t know her. Marlowe isn’t quite so sure they’re telling the truth, so he starts digging deeper. He’s also hired by Lindsay Marriott to be his bodyguard on what he thinks will be a simple task – he’s to head out and buy back some jewels that belong to a friend of his that were stolen. Things don’t go as planned. As in many film noirs, there are two girls – a potential femme fatale in Mrs. Helen Grayle (Claire Trevor) – the younger wife of a rich man, whose jewels were the ones stolen, and the so-called “good girl” Ann Grayle (Anne Shirley) – Helen’s step daughter – who doesn’t trust her stepmother. There’s an assortment of other lowlifes, and cops, and everyone else you’d expect to find in a noir.

Marlowe is played by Dick Powell – who is the screen’s first official Marlowe (two other adaptations of Chandler’s novels, including a 1942 film based on the same novel were made, but both change the character’s name). His Marlowe isn’t quite as good as the best screen Marlowe’s – Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946), Gould in The Long Goodbye (1973) or Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely (1975) – but it’s pretty good. It’s more of a surface performance, with Powell relishing the clever dialogue he is given to deliver – and also having fun being smarter than everyone else in the movie. Powell has a bemused grin – he’s not taking this too seriously – accept in the bookending scenes (unnecessary in my opinion) as he recounts for the police everything that happened.

 Powell’s performance could describe the movie itself – it’s full of surface charm, without much in the way of substance beneath it. The best film noirs, of course, had style to spare – and Dmytryk’s direction certainly has that in this film – but get deeper into the darkness of wartime, and post wartime, America. Chandler’s novels often tapped into this darkness as well. This film just skims the surface of that darkness. Most film noir isn’t fun – but Murder, My Sweet is quite fun.

There are things to like about the movie – Claire Trevor would do far better work in noirs over the next decade, but she’s in fine form here, honing her craft. The screenplay is clever, and Powell is fun to watch. The “love story” between him and Ann doesn’t fit in with the rest of the movie – in particular in the final scene, which rings false.

Overall though, Murder, My Sweet is fine, if somewhat lightweight, film noir. It’s one of the films that helped establish many of the archetypes of film noir – which better, deeper films would use in the coming years in one of the best genres in film history.

Movie Review: The Sniper

The Sniper (1952)
Directed by: Edward Dmytryk.
Written by: Harry Brown and Edna Anhalt and Edward Anhalt.
Starring: Adolphe Menjou (Police Lt. Frank Kafka), Arthur Franz (Eddie Miller), Gerald Mohr (Police Sgt. Joe Ferris), Marie Windsor (Jean Darr), Frank Faylen (Police Insp. Anderson), Richard Kiley (Dr. James G. Kent), Mabel Paige (Landlady), Marlo Dwyer (May Nelson), Geraldine Carr (Checker).

I couldn’t help but think of many of the recent mass shootings while watching Edward Dmytryk’s 1952 film noir The Sniper. True, the main character in the film, Eddie Miller (Arthur Franz) never goes on a one time killing spree, but instead picks his victims out one at a time. Yet the psychology behind his actions, and that of other mass shooters remains the same – a hatred of women brought on because the man cannot understand why women do not want him. He sees himself as a nice guy, but he is driven mad when a woman who was simply being nice to him announces, casually, that she has a boyfriend. Why not me, he seems to be thinking. This sets him off on his spree – a spree he cannot stop himself from carrying out.

When you watch a film like The Sniper, you have to try and imagine what it was like for audiences back in 1952. While shows like Criminal Minds, and countless other shows and movies, are commonplace. But that wasn’t the case in 1952. Many of the weakest scenes in The Sniper involve a psychologist (Richard Kiley) who explains everything that the killer is going through. These are like the scene near the end of Hitchcock’s Psycho, which grinds the film to a halt, when a shrink goes into the pathology of Norman Bates. The Sniper argues that Eddie Miller cannot control himself – and makes the case that these people need to be identified early, so that they can be treated – or at least locked away before they kill a lot of people. There is more of this in The Sniper than there was in Psycho, which hurts the film, but in 1952 was a somewhat daring choice – so much so that the film received an Oscar nomination for its writing – rare for B-noir film at the time.

The rest of the film is a tense thriller however – well handled by journeyman director Edward Dmytryk – by then a veteran of noir films like Murder My Sweet (1944) and Crossfire (1947) – the later of which does a better job at mixing social issues (in that case anti-Semitism) with a crackerjack thriller. The murder scenes are well handled and non-exploitive, and Dmytryk does a good job of juggling the scenes of Miller’s unravelling and the police procedural of trying to catch him.

The Sniper is, admittedly, a relatively minor noir effort. It’s not a great film, and it is something that has been done better, both before and since it was made. But it’s a fine example of the genre – a stylistic thriller with slightly more on its mind that many noirs of the time. It may not be a great movie, but it’s a good one.

Classic Movie Review: Broken Lance

Broken Lance (1954)
Directed by: Edward Dmytryk.
Written by: Richard Murphy, story by Philip Yordan.
Starring: Spencer Tracy (Matt Devereaux), Robert Wagner (Joe Devereaux), Jean Peters (Barbara), Richard Widmark (Ben Devereaux), Katy Jurado (Señora Devereaux), Hugh O'Brian (Mike Devereaux), Eduard Franz (Two Moons), Earl Holliman (Denny Devereaux), E.G. Marshall (Horace - The Governor), Carl Benton Reid (Clem Lawton), Philip Ober (Van Cleve), Robert Burton (Mac Andrews).

Some stories are so universal, you can do practically anything to them, and their inherent themes and charms still come through. Take Edward Dmytryk’s Broken Lance (1954) as an example. The film is a remake of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1949 film House of Strangers. Except that House of Strangers was a black and white film noir with Edward G. Robinson in the lead role, and Broken Lance is a color, Cinemascope Western, with Spencer Tracy in the lead role. Yet, the same basic story exists in both films – and if you know your Shakespeare, you’ll recognize a lot of King Lear in these movies.

In Broken Lance, Tracy stars as Matt Devereaux, the son of Irish immigrants, who made his way West and has become a wealthy cattle baron. He has tried hard to instill hard work into his four sons – the first three from his first marriage, and the youngest, Joe (Robert Wagner) from his marriage to a Native woman (Katy Jurado). His three eldest sons resent the old man – he has always driven them hard, and paid them like any other cowhand on the ranch. He plans on leaving the ranch to his sons, but until then he rules with an iron fist. The eldest son Ben (Richard Widmark), is intelligent (his two younger brothers are dolts) and wants to see the ranch modernized, but the old man is pigheaded and refuses to budge. Joe has a more charitable view of his old man – probably because he came along later, when Matt was already rich, so his life was easier than Ben and his brothers.

Perhaps solely because of casting, Spencer Tracy is more sympathetic than Edward G. Robinson was in House of Strangers. While in House of Strangers, Robinson is more monstrous, and willfully commits criminal actions, and demands what he knows is too much from his sons, Tracy is more Lear-like – basically a stubborn fool who does not realize the damage his actions have caused to his family. It also helps to make Tracy more sympathetic that his eldest son is played by Richard Widmark – best known for playing snarling sociopaths. Although the movie gives him reasons, and Widmark plays the role well, he is still very clearly the villain of the piece. The film also changes the ending – set years after the main action of the movie – and is a little less for it. The fratricide in House of Strangers makes far more sense, than the rather random ending of Broken Lance.

Broken Lance is interesting in another way though – while not the first, it is certainly among the first wave of Westerns to address racism in a real way. One of the reasons why Matt cannot get out of his legal troubles, is because he is married to a Native woman – and as a result Joe is a “half breed”. The Governor, who Matt put there with his political contributions, tells Matt he would be willing to appoint a “sympathetic” judge, if you he ensures that Joe stays away from his daughter Barbara (Jean Peters). Later in the film, Widmark lashes out angrily at Matt saying “did you ever ask me if I want an Indian as a stepmother”. In Broken Lance, the most honorable characters are all natives – Katy Jurado was nominated for an Oscar for her sensitive portrayal as Matt’s loyal wife, Joe has a moral code he will not compromise, and Two Moons (Eduard Franz) becomes the hero of the film in the late stages. It is, of course, one of the ironies of old Hollywood films that even in a movie like Broken Lance, which decries racism, that none of the Native characters are actually played by Natives – still though, Broken Lance represents progress, a change in thinking in Western about the way Natives were portrayed.

Broken Lance is not quite a great film, although it is entertaining, well made and extremely well acted. It is far more interesting if you’ve seen House of Strangers and can compare and contrast the two films, and how Broken Lance is pretty much effortlessly able to transport a film noir story to the Western genre – keeping the darkness of the themes intact, even if it changes the specifics. Broken Lance is not quite great – but it is very good.