The younger girl is mentally unstable, to boot. Most reading this are probably well familiar with the plot of Chandler’s debut novel from 1939, but for the sake of conversation, a quick rundown: Marlowe’s client is a wealthy old man, General Sternwood, who has two wild daughters, both of them young adults. Let’s start with The Big Sleep, although it was the second of the two films in which Mitchum portrayed Marlowe. Shout! Factory has just released a new BluRay edition of the two ‘70s movies featuring Mitchum as Marlowe, and this invites a discussion about those two in relation to their predecessors as well as the Chandler novels on which they’re based. Two of the better movies of that kind were created from Chandler’s stories in the film genre’s golden age: Murder, My Sweet (1944) and The Big Sleep (1946).īut what about the two films that were made in the mid-to-late 1970s that come from the same two novels as the above mentioned? They starred Robert Mitchum, himself a leading figure of vintage film noir, at the latter stage of his acting career. The evocative atmosphere in those books, along with the memorable characters and suspense-rich plots, makes them ideal for transference to the big screen-particularly via the film noir style. Raymond Chandler’s novels featuring private investigator Philip Marlowe are perfectly ripe for film adaptation.

Farewell my lovely 1940