A Film Canon

 

 

As the first noir to fulfil Raymond Chandler's particular hard-boiled vision, Murder, My Sweet complicates narrative to the point of extraneity, explicating it as the mere pretext for a poetic topography of mid-century L.A., as well as an elaboration of its quintessential resident - private eye Philip Marlowe (Dick Powell). Although Bogart may perfect Marlowe's iconic one-liners, Powell's background in musical comedy provides him with the requisite awareness, or assumption, of audience to ensure that his delivery is less solipsistic, more generous and, ultimately, closer to the wry self-deprecation of Chandler's original ("If I always knew what I meant, I'd be a genius"), if not its more embittered overtones. This, in turn, opens up his vulnerabilities, explaining the curious frequency with which he loses consciousness or is physically debilitated, as well as the priority given to his sense of manipulation as the motivating factor in that persistant contemplation of an ostensibly straightforward case that propels the 'narrative'; that is, the pervasive characterisation of his entire trajectory as a mere attempt to forestall an insidious, coercive presence that is ultimately identified with the cityscape itself, necessitating a ceaseless movement between its increasingly amorphous co-ordinates. Hence the continuous sense of being watched, which even extends to the isolated canyon where the crucial murder takes place, confirming Marlowe's quest as one for an elusive omniscience, or objectivity, and his wise-cracking as the attempt to fill in the brooding, unreal silence that settles over his office with dusk, is merely clarified by the neon that illuminates it, and only admits of description, rather than competition: "I just found out, all over again, how big this city is."