Cinema
Not for purists
Kenneth Robinson
Farewell My Lovely Director: Dick Richards Stars: Robert Mitchum, Charlotte Rampling, John Ireland, Sylvia Miles 'AA' Leicester Square Theatre (95 mins).
Russian Roulette Director: Lou Lombardo Stars: George Segal, Cristine Raines, Denholm Elliott, Bo Brundin, Gordon Jackson 'A' Rialto (90 mins).
I have always imagined that Raymond Chandler had trouble with his breathing. Sometimes giving sharp little pants. At other times exhaling slowly and at length. Writing sentences to match each erratic breath. First a quick one. Then an ever-soslightly longer one, with a bit gasped on at the end. And then, filling his lungs as he dipped his pen, seeming ready to go on for quite a long time, and suddenly stopping.
Once you get into the rhythm of such a style it must be difficult to stop writing like that. But I find Raymond Chandler's jerky prose almost impossible to read. So Farewell My Lovely, the 'toughest case' of private detective Philip Marlowe, is not a book I know from memory. I've dipped into it enough, though, to be shocked by the sight of Mitchum trampling over Rampling. In this film version Marlowe kills the 'Lovely' of the title, something he didn't even think about doing in the book. And the obscene brothel-keeper he destroys so brutally in the film is, in the original, not
a woman but a man of the same name. And in the book this murdered character doesn't get hurt at all.
I suppose none of these changes is important. Only the purist, if a Raymond Chandler fan could ever be called a purist, would object to them. The thing that matters most here is the atmosphere. It is true that the plot is ingenious to the point of being indescribable. But I liked the film more for the way the director, Dick Richards, uses the camera than for anything in the writing. He was once a photographer for Vogue and Esquire and at times he seems to be bringing stills to life. For instance, when Charlotte Rampling is standing at the top of an old staircase, posed deliciously for a few minutes before descending. Or when a square car of the 'thirties is seen frozen against a Los Angeles office block. And later in the picture, when a sidewalk bookstall is reconstructed so well that you can see why the director let his camera linger over its memory-lane magazines.
Talking of memory lane, there are, of course, lots of those gangster-type hats. There's a nice moment when Philip Marlowe hangs on to his homburg in a lady's drawing-room, right up to the moment when tea is thrust into his hand. And then the hat plummets heavily between his feet. It's a little throw-away act, but very funny.
David Goodman's screenplay mixes narrative rather quaintly with dialogue. So you sometimes see Marlowe actually doing something at the same time as he says, offscreen, that this is what he intends to do. The gimmick doesn't exactly help the plot, but it has a naïveté that seems to belong to the period of the picture.
One disadvantage of making a 'thirties film in Los Angeles is the obvious trouble the director has in finding locations that still look old. This means that the outside scenes are mostly very dull. They are certainly not dull in Russian Roulette, where Lou Lombardo has introduced sequence after sequence of really stunning pictures of Vancouver. These are made even better by having Cristine Raines in the foreground, playing the part of a girl with the unfortunate name of Bogna. And by Denholm Elliott doing an exceptionally good cameo performance.
I detect in this film a touch of the boyscomic attitude to Russians, who are seen here to be both stupid and dispensable. But to make it all right they turn out to be only the very naughtiest Russians, plotting against their own country. I am sorry to say, incidentally, that this film goes well beyond the new-style Family Violence I have been warming to recently.
The frequent moments of tension in this picture lead to a continual outbreak of themes for percussion, and these were nicely composed by Michael J. Lewis. He also gives us some pleasant send-up variations on Russian melodies. But the music of the week comes in Farewell My Lovely, when Philip Marlowe looks into a club
where Edra Gale is belting out the Sammy Cahn/Jules Styne number, 'I've Heard That Song Before'.
And the best visual sequence of the week, if you won't think it precious of me to say so, is the view of Los Angeles under the opening titles. It also introduced me to the best piece of one-upmanship of the week. 'Very good indeed,' said a distinguished science correspondent sitting near me, 'if you happen to like rose-tinted library shots.'
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