The first shot at translating a Raymond Chandler mystery, in this case the film based on Chandler's Farewell My Lovely came off fairly well. The screen writer John Paxton used a framing device of Chandler's private detective Philip Marlow being interrogated by the police. This allowed the Marlow character to narrate the story in a flashback using a lot of Raymond Chandler's hard boiled dialog. Probably the only misstep was having to work a last minute love story into the film at the end.
The big news with this film was the transformation of singer Dick Powell from one of Busby Berkley's performing pawns in his extravagant Warner Brother's musicals. Powell does a very good job playing Marlowe. He gets able assistance from a decent supporting cast, Mike Mazurki as the dumb brute of a gangster, Moose Malone. Claire Trevor as Helen Grayle the "femme fatal" and Otto Kruger as some sort of phony psychic healer Jules Amthor. The actor Anne Shirley, real name Dawn Evelyn Paris is Marlowe's love interest Ann Grayle a rather weak role in the film.
Considering how confusing these Raymond Chandler stories can be the director Edward Dmytryk does a pretty good job of keeping the plot straight. The film has lots of noir touches which actually became murder mystery cliches copied by other detective films. However Murder My Sweet used them first.
The film runs an entertaining 95 minutes, screenplay by John Paxton.
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