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Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely (1940) |
Farewell, My Lovely was published in 1940, the further adventures of detective Philip Marlowe, first introduced in The Big Sleep in 1939 (the same year that the film version of Gone With the Wind appeared). Farewell, My Lovely has been filmed several times. First filmed loosely as The Falcon Takes Over in 1942, a film on which Chandler collaborated but which rewrote Philip Marlowe as Gay Lawrence, it was filmed again as Murder, My Sweet in 1944. This version starred Dick Powell, an actor known in the '30s for playing the lead tenor in musicals like Broadway Melody of 1933, and reinvented Powell's career. The book was finally filmed under its original title in 1975, starring 58-year-old Robert Mitchum, and with a bit role for a pre-Rocky Sylvester Stallone. Chandler's own favorite among the film Marlowes, he said, was Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (a film which also starred Lauren Bacall)--but Chandler also said that his ideal film Marlowe would be debonaire Cary Grant (who never played the role). Along with Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler helped invent the genre of "hard-boiled" detective fiction.
Don't forget our screening of "L.A. Confidential"
Sunday, Dec. 3, at 7:30 p.m. (Frist 302)
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| Murder, My Sweet (1945) | Farewell, My Lovely (1975) | Farewell, My Lovely (1975) |
Questions:
• What is the appeal of the detective genre, particularly the "hard-boiled"
detective genre?
• In Farewell, My Lovely, what's the effect of having Marlowe
narrate the story in the first person? (We've had intrusive narrators
before, but this is the first first-person narrative we've encountered.)
• Why does Marlowe use so many similes -- and particularly such outrageous
ones? (e.g., p. 4: "...he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula
on a slice of angel food.")
• Why, for that matter, is Marlowe such a wise-ass?
• Given our interest in gender relations in the course so far, what
can you say about Marlowe's relationships with women? His relationships
with other men?
• How well does Farewell, My Lovely enact the principles Chandler
outlines for the detective story in his article in the reading packet,
"The Simple Art of Murder"?
• What's the deal with the little pink bug?
• Why do Chandler's characters drink so much?
• And finally, from a 1995 essay by Joyce Carol Oates on Chandler in
The
New York Review of Books -- and particularly appropriate given last
week's reading: "While the romance genre, for women, is universally reviled,
the mystery-detective genre, so transparently its equivalent for men, has
long enjoyed a privileged cult status. What are the secret wishes
this genre's elaborately contrived scenarios fulfill? What are its
subterranean assumptions, its blood-beliefs? Who is the solitary
hero-savior, bearer of sacred seed that never replicates itself in mere
flesh? -- for detectives, of course, have no progeny."
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L.A. Confidential (1997)
Dir: Curtis Hanson Starring: Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Kim Basinger Review:
L.A. Confidential
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More Links:
Raymond Chandler's Los
Angeles
Chandler
- bibliography, quotes, "facts"
More Chandler
links
Raymond Chandler
and his followers
Joyce Carol
Oates's essay on Chandler
A Glossary of Hardboiled
Slang
African American Mystery Page
Black
Street Fiction
The Thrilling Detective
Web Site
The Official Robert Crais Web
Site
Sue Grafton Web Site Home Page
Gumshoe Dot Com: A short story (with apologies to Raymond Chandler)
Hardboiled Heaven
Hard-Boiled
Mysteries website
Hard-Boiled
Noir page
The Hero Pulps of
the '30s and '40s
Private
Eye Reviews
Film Noir
& Pulp Fiction
A Guide to Classic
Mystery and Detection