MURDER MY SWEET (DVD) DVD

Murder, My Sweet
One-time movie crooner Dick Powell literally turned his career around in the 1944 film noir Murder My Sweet. Powell stars as Phillip Marlowe, the hard-boiled private detective antihero created by novelist Raymond Chandler. Hired by hulking, psychotic Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) to locate Moose's old girl friend, Marlowe is pitched headlong into a morass of intrigue and deception. The participants include duplicitous glamour-girl Claire Trevor, sodden slattern Esther Howard, suave blackmailer Otto Kruger and dyspeptic doctor Ralf Harolde. At one point, Marlowe is railroaded into a lunatic asylum, where under the influence of drugs he experiences a surrealistic nightmare the like of which would not be seen on screen again until Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). So fascinating are the "bad" characters in Murder My Sweet that the two 100% "good" characters, heroine Anne Shirley and detective Don Douglas, seem wishy-washy wimps by comparison. After years of insipid golly-gee roles, Dick Powell startled his fans with his cynical, world-weary portrayal of Philip Marlowe. The part put him back on top of the box-office tallies and enabled him to extend his acting career into the 1950s, which led to an even more lucrative "third life" as a powerful TV-studio executive. Murder My Sweet was based on Chandler's Farewell My Lovely, previously filmed in 1942 as The Falcon Takes Over; a remake, also titled Murder My Sweet, was produced in 1975, with Robert Mitchum as Marlowe. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Cast Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe Claire Trevor as Mrs. Grayle Anne Shirley as Ann Grayle Otto Kruger as Amthor Mike Mazurki as Moose Malloy Miles Mander as Mr. Grayle Douglas Walton as Marriott Donald Douglas as Lt. Randall Ralf Harolde as Dr. Sonderborg Esther Howard as Mrs. Florian

Crew Carroll Clark - Art Director Albert S. D'Agostino - Art Director Edward Stevenson - Costume Designer William Dorfman - First Assistant Director Edward Dmytryk - Director Joseph Noriega - Editor Sid Rogell - Executive Producer Roy Webb - Composer (Music Score) Constantin Bakaleinikoff - Musical Direction/Supervision Harry J. Wild - Cinematographer Adrian Scott - Producer Michael Orenbach - Set Designer Darrell Silvera - Set Designer Vernon Walker - Special Effects James G. Stewart - Sound/Sound Designer John Paxton - Screenwriter Raymond Chandler - Book Author

Murder, My Sweet
Edward Dmytryk's sharp, skillfully made oir arguably captures the wit and verbal fluency of Raymond Chandler's style more faithfully than any of the other films made from his books. One of the key early oirs, it revived the career of Powell, who was by then eager to escape his choir-boy image. Through the use of voice-over narration, the film is able to retain the writer's vision of rot beneath the cheery surfaces of the City of Angels, as the sardonic detective keeps up a running commentary on the far from angelic gallery of characters. While his disdain is evenly spread, he reserves his greatest contempt for Otto Kruger's quack "psychic advisor," a precursor to New Age con artists of more modern vintage. Hired by a Frankenstein-like ex-con to find his old girl friend, Powell's Marlowe seems to either get cold-cocked or drugged in every other scene, a state of affairs he comes to regard with bemused detachment. A sequence in which Marlowe has been fed some malign psychoactive substance now seems especially funny due to the now less-than-frightening special effects. Unlike most oirs, in which the protagonist is overwhelmed by a nightmarish sense of disorientation, Chandler's detective has the wit of the only sane man in a world gone mad. Powell is perfect as the snarky, semi-tough hero, and Claire Trevor makes a slyly elusive femme fatale. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
 

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General Specifications: Language Options: English Subtitle Options: English, French, Spanish Sound Processing: DD1: Dolby Digital Mono Additional Features: cc Commentary by author/film noir specialist Alain Silver Theatrical trailer Subtitles: English, Français, & Español MPAA Rating: NR DVD Discs Included: 1 DVD Sides: 1 DVD DVD Region Code: 1 Content Length: 95 min   DVD Chapters: Side #1 -- 1. Third-Degree Credits [2:32] 2. Hired by Moose [3:03] 3. Flap at Florian's [3:01] 4. Jessie's Place [4:30] 5. Marriot's Rendezvous [4:01] 6. Phantoms in the Dark [3:21] 7. Watch Your Step [2:09] 8. Lady With an Interest [3:09] 9. Mrs. Grayle's Trust [7:08] 10. Competing Offers [4:01] 11. Old Psycological Tricks [4:30] 12. Stranglehold [3:47] 13. Crazy Coked-up Dream [4:44] 14. Against Doctor's Orders [5:13] 15. Take my Friend [2:19] 16. Protective Daughter [3:32] 17. Which Side Anybody's On [3:28] 18. His Desirable Wife [4:41] 19. Pretty Good Guesser [2:57] 20. Helen's Request [6:21] 21. Visited by Moose [3:40] 22. Femme Fatale [4:08] 23. Couple of Mugs [3:33] 24. Couldn't Let Her Go [1:46] 25. Her Kind of Face [3:35]