Farewell, My Lovely

Farewell, My Lovely is a great entertainment and a celebration of Robert Mitchum's absolute originality. Read full review

Elegant neo-noir with a perfectly cast Robert Mitchum, at 58 the oldest actor to play Marlowe. Read full review

An affectionate adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel that beautifully evokes the seamy side of 1940s Los Angeles via superb production design and the same period atmosphere cinematographer Alonzo previously evoked for Chinatown. Read full review

The film's triumph is Mitchum's definitive Marlowe, which captures perfectly the character's down-at-heel integrity and erratic emotional involvement with his cases. Read full review

It's as if someone had put pillow springs, power-steering and a tape deck into a classic racing-car. It is still handsome and it still goes, but it is a handsome mediocrity. Read full review

By simply rack-focusing Mitchum in an occasional close-up, Richards evokes an entire biography, a sense of weariness and reflection. [25 Aug 1975, p.66]

Perversely, it is a reverence for langauge - the most exciting aspect of Chandler's novels - that does the movie in. With a face like an old catcher's mitt, a beat-up bulk anesthetized by booze, Mitchum as Marlowe doesn't have to tell us a thing about himself. But tell us he does - in gumshoe-ese that echoes Chandler's language without its hallucinatory sparkle. [18 Aug 1975, p.73]

Farewell, My Lovely is a lethargic, vaguely campy tribute to Hollywood's private eye mellers of the 1940s and to writer Raymond Chandler, whose Phillip Marlowe character has inspired a number of features. Despite an impressive production and some firstrate performances, this third version fails to generate much suspense or excitement. Read full review

This is the sort of private-eye period piece that means to do honor to the traditions of Raymond Chandler and the hard-boiled melodrama. But through its own dim eagerness it ends up making a mockery of them. Read full review