Marlowe (1969)
While not a great one, this is an unusual version of Philip Marlowe on film. James Garner is an odd choice in a way, but he's handsome and charming. The photographer, Bill Daniels, is a stalwart from the classic years of Hollywood, and it shows, with nicely filmed scenes (in color). Daniels is famous as Garbo's main photographer, if that gives an idea of his long lineage.
It's definitely 1969. New Hollywood is here, and there is a certain cheese factor that is part of the game, and not in the best ways. And the story itself is just not Raymond Chandler's best. Director Paul Bogart does his best, but for a comparison of a noir crime update, you might prefer the wonderful "The Long Goodbye" from 1973.
But here we are. Garner is really good, in fact, and if not a Humphrey Bogart type, that might be really appropriate. Still, he's indifferent to pretty women until he isn't, he drinks, he's sarcastic, he is appropriately weary. Here he smokes a pipe, and he remains interesting.
There is (for me) a simple appeal to the sets and the time it was shot. It's a crazy time in US history (great crazy). Everything is updated—there is no sense of recreating the 1940s, but rather of just setting the old story (from the 30s) into the new world.
There are some fun curiosities, like Carroll O'Conner (the leading male in "All in the Family," which started the year before)—who isn't quite convincing as a tough cop. And the gay hairdresser played by Christopher Cary. And the side actor who does karate on Marlowe's office (for real) by the name of Bruce Lee (in his first American film). And two beautiful women (as usual) who play more pithy parts than you'd expect (clever or strong) until, of course, the stripper scene at the end. One of them, the fabulous Rita Moreno, had a continuing career with Garner in the "Rockford Files" for t.v. And finally another William Daniels (unrelated) who played Dustin Hoffman's dad in "The Graduate" two years early, and who is so different here you might not recognize him.
Okay, so what ends up happening is a weird mix of humor and cleverness. The movie really wants to entertain, and yet it keeps inside the hard edged world of classic 1940s noir with references to tough guys and ice picks in the neck. It has almost absurdist humor and then it seems (somewhat) to want to take the crime and the criminals and the sleuthing seriously. It doesn't quite jive.
Blame the era, maybe, but watch "Klute" or other detective yarns from the era and you can see an opportunity that went astray. I enjoyed it thoroughly, but only by kicking back. The story is a bit jumbled, either at its root or in its telling, but I think they thought viewers would enjoy the whole situation and all these interesting actors at work. It only goes so far.
