Farewell My Lovely (1975)

Los Angeles novelist Raymond Chandler better than any other writer chronicled the City of Angels’ seedy underside back in the days of Hollywood’s youth. The Robert Mitchum-led production of Farewell My Lovely (1975), better than any other Chandler adaptation for the screen, captures the dark cravings and savage twists of the human soul as tracked by cool and sardonic tough-guy private eye Philip Marlowe. Marlowe is hired to locate the vanished moll of a moose-sized thug fresh from the slammer. Every step of the way brings the dick to another double-cross, another veiled identity, another self-serving lie. Each deception brings Chandler’s antihero closer to the ultimate truth, and perhaps to an early grave.