Murder, My Sweet (1944)
The first of the Philip Marlowe movies — with the oddly cast Dick Powell (usually a musical comedy star) as the lead. When Claire Trevor coos over his slender body in a t-shirt it’s a bit hard to take; but it’s important to remember that notions of physical perfection —especially male ones — change over time. The plot is as impenetrable as most film noir, and there is a ‘McGuffin’ — ‘jade’ instead of the famous ‘Maltese falcon.’ There is a certain masochism about the hero; it is a requisite of masculinity. Regularly being beat up and nearly killed is a sort of badge of honour for a real man, but only if he makes wisecracks about it (007 does this too). I’ve never read a Raymond Chandler novel, but it seems to me this aspect of Murder, My Sweet is the most literary aspect of the movie, and hints at its depth. Some lines seem very Raymond Chandler, or at least beyond philosophically witty, as when Marlowe says, in response to a call for silence — “Remarks want you to make ‘em. They’ve got their tongues hanging out waiting to be said.” And good girl Anne Shirley sizes up bad girl Claire Trevor with remarkable alacrity: “I hate the big league blondes: beautiful expensive babes who know what they’ve got, all bubble bath. dewy morning. and moonlight. Inside blue steel, cold — cold like that only not that clean.” But it is the dream sequence that marks the profundity of Chandler’s world view (filmic though the sequence is — not perhaps as nakedly surrealistic as the one in Hitchcock’s Spellbound — but arty in it’s own way). Otto Kruger plays Jules Amthor — a pathological psychiatrist, and the scene where he drugs Marlowe with what appear to be psychedelic chemicals is truly horrifying. But Marlowe staggers out of it with unbelievable good humour -- in search of his next adventure. This kind of residence I don’t understand. Coward that I am, I kept wanting to tell Marlowe to go home and hide. This kind of attraction to violation — throwing one’s body into the nexus of brutality — seems almost like an addiction for Marlowe, and the only conclusion one may draw about the universe — from Marlowe’s compulsion to be destroyed, as well as the opportunities offered for him to have it happen — is that it is beyond chaotic. Life’s vicissitudes are merely nonsensical and not only is something rotten in the state of Denmark but it just seems at every moment, for no discernible reason, to get rottener still. And it was never so clear to me before that it is the femme fatale that sits at the heart of this chaos, because she represents an evil so paradoxical and so alluring that it’s irresistible. There is no defence. Leaving the misogyny aside for a moment — and also acknowledging that to outlaw the femme fatale is to outlaw opportunities for actresses like Claire Trevor to be evil, beautiful, feminine, tempting, heartless and vulnerable — a great test for a thespian of any ilk — Dick Powell's conflicted response to her is the essence of every person’s perceptual confusion. She is like a psychedelic drug; on the one hand as much a tantalising escape from the relentless numbness of the day to day routine as a treacherous stairway to madness, morbidity, blindness, incoherence, and living hell. She says to Marlow “I find men attractive” and he responds “I bet they meet you halfway.” How could they not, as the femme fatale breaks the first rule of being a woman: that she is not at any cost to desire openly, and certainly must not ever be more desiring than a man. Trevor crumbles in his arms, Marlowe’s nostrils disappear in her too blonde curls, and she cries “I haven’t been good not halfway good, I haven’t even been smart, but I need help — please I need you!” — and he is like putty in her hands — or perhaps something firmer than that. A thug called Moose (Mike Mazurki) calls her “cute as lace pants” and when she’s dead “cute as lace pants, always.” But Marlowe is not a force for good, he just happens to be in the middle of this chaos called life, just trying to make a buck; after all it feels like people have to bribe him to investigate anything. When Anne Shirley accuses him of not taking sides he says: "I don't know which side anybody's on. I don't even know who's playing today.” I’m trying to quit smoking, and the cigarette is as toxic and yielding as Claire Trevor, it’s always throwing itself in front of me and acting vulnerable, as if it might die if I don’t smoke it, and what it’s offering me is everything I don’t want to miss. I screamed at the man I love today —“this is a nightmare” and it certainly seemed that way to me, after a sleepless night and an anxious morning; addiction is certainly as appealing as Claire Trevor and just as scary. So what do we do about this chaotic mess called life, where evil often masquerades as good, or just the grandest pleasure? Philip Marlowe seems to be saying the best you can do is just roll with the punches and make caustic remarks, because, as he explains, those caustic remarks are lined up just waiting to be made. The appeal of the myth of COVID-19 is the appeal of all latter day thinking; an obsession with a binary, any binary. (I’ve been told it’s simple-minded to blame digital technology — which as I understand it, is based on a binary—especially since human history tells us the notion that the world is evenly divided into good and evil, that both are recognisable, and that evil, once identified can and will be punished — is just too appealing even for words.) This chaos is too much; we want answers. But reason, is, I’m afraid, woefully inadequate to sort this out. COVID-19, on the other hand, offers so many reassurances: climate change, populist politics, economic decline — the answer is in your mask. You are good if you wear one; you are making the world a better place, because you care for your fellow man. I don’t so much oppose masks, I just wonder why bother? As there is as much proof that they work as they don’t? (See https://hugsovermasks.nationbuilder.com/) But it’s a moral question; and I just don’t want to get involved, and it won’t work anyway, to even try. I can only do my best to be an obedient masochist who manages now and then to offer a wry remark; I may even switch sides, as Marlowe does, because the only way to ally oneself with truth is to assert that there is none.
