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Of all the Philip Marlowes, Robert Mitchum’s in Farewell, My Lovely resonates most deeply. That’s because this is Marlowe past his prime, and Mitchum imbues Raymond Chandler’s legendary private detective with a sense of maturity as well as a melancholy spirit. And yet there’s plenty of Mitchum’s renowned self-deprecating humour and charismatic charm to remind us of his own iconic presence. As in the previous 1944 film version, Murder, My Sweet, Marlowe searches all over L.A. for the elusive girlfriend of ex-con Moose Malloy, a lovable giant who might as well be King Kong. In typical Chandler fashion, the weary Marlowe uncovers a hotbed of lust, corruption, and betrayal. Like Malloy, he’s disillusioned by it all, despite his tough exterior, and possesses a tinge of sentimentality for the good old days. About the only current dream he can hold onto is Joe DiMaggio and his fabulous hitting streak. Made in 1975, a year after Chinatown (shot by the same cinematographer, John Alonzo), Farewell, My Lovely is more straightforward and nostalgic, but still possesses a requisite hard-boiled edge, and the best kind of angst the ’70s had to offer. (By the way, you’ll notice Sylvester Stallone in a rather violent cameo, a year before his Rocky breakthrough.) –Bill Desowitz

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In the entire history of American movies, The Night of the Hunter stands out as the rarest and most exotic of specimens. It is, to say the least, a masterpiece–and not just because it was the only movie directed by flamboyant actor Charles Laughton or the only produced solo screenplay by the legendary critic James Agee (who also co-wrote The African Queen). The truth is, nobody has ever made anything approaching its phantasmagoric, overheated style in which German expressionism, religious hysteria, fairy-tale fantasy (of the Grimm-est variety), and stalker movie are brought together in a furious boil. Like a nightmarish premonition of stalker movies to come, Night of the Hunter tells the suspenseful tale of a demented preacher (Robert Mitchum, in a performance that prefigures his memorable villain in Cape Fear), who torments a boy and his little sister–even marries their mixed-up mother (Shelley Winters)–because he’s certain the kids know where their late bank-robber father hid a stash of stolen money. So dramatic, primal, and unforgettable are its images–the preacher’s shadow looming over the children in their bedroom, the magical boat ride down a river whose banks teem with fantastic wildlife, those tattoos of LOVE and HATE on the unholy man’s knuckles, the golden locks of a drowned woman waving in the current along with the indigenous plant life in her watery grave–that they’re still haunting audiences (and filmmakers) today. –Jim Emerson, Amazon.com

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The Maltese Falcon is still the tightest, sharpest, and most cynical of Hollywood’s official deathless classics, bracingly tough even by post-Tarantino standards. Humphrey Bogart is Dashiell Hammett’s definitive private eye, Sam Spade, struggling to keep his hard-boiled cool as the double-crosses pile up around his ankles. The plot, which dances all around the stolen Middle Eastern statuette of the title, is too baroque to try to follow, and it doesn’t make a bit of difference. The dialogue, much of it lifted straight from Hammett, is delivered with whip-crack speed and sneering ferocity, as Bogie faces off against Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet, fends off the duplicitous advances of Mary Astor, and roughs up a cringing “gunsel” played by Elisha Cook Jr. It’s an action movie of sorts, at least by implication: the characters always seem keyed up, right on the verge of erupting into violence. This is a turning-point picture in several respects: John Huston (The African Queen) made his directorial debut here in 1941, and Bogart, who had mostly played bad guys, was a last-minute substitution for George Raft, who must have been kicking himself for years afterward. This is the role that made Bogart a star and established his trend-setting (and still influential) antihero persona. –David Chute

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