*Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe- An Encore- "The High Window"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Raymond Chandler's The High Window.

Book Review

The High Window, Raymond Chandler, Random House, New York, 1992

Phillip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's classic noir hard-boiled private detective, forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets, is right at home here in his search, at the request of a dipsy dowager looking for solutions on the cheap and with no questions asked , for the inevitable “missing” (person or thing, fill in the blank). In this case a missing thing, a coin, a rare gold doubloon that has been stolen by, she claims, her no good gold-digging, newly-minted daughter-in-law. Along the way to the “truth” old Phillip finds more "conveniently" dead bodies, which may or may not connect in with the case, more kooks and more smarmy police officers than one can shake a stick at. The only things missing in this one are that whiff of perfume from some remote icy dame that has Phillip in a dither and ready to "chase after windmills" for and he takes no saps to the head. He will thus live to fight another day. There is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly around the identity of the killers of the various dead bodies.

Have no fear, however, the intrepid Marlowe will figure it out in the end and some kind of 'rough' justice will prevail. At this point in the Chandler Marlowe series our shamus has been around the block more than a few times but he still is punching away at the 'bad guys' and the absurdity of the modern world. How does this one compare with the other Marlowe volumes? Give me those background oil derricks churning out the wealth while looking for General Sternwood's Rusty Regan (and that whiff of perfume mentioned above from the dizzy Sternwood daughters) in The Big Sleep or the run down stucco flats in some shady places in pursuit of Moose's Velma (and her whiff od perfume too, come to think of it) in Farewell, My Lovely any day. There no one to really root for here (except, a little, the much put upon dowager's secretary/ “wounded sparrow”, Merle). Nevertheless, as always with Chandler, you get high literature in a plebeian package.

***Detective Novelist Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe Meets Leon Trotsky- “On The Quest For The New Socialist Persona”

Click On Title To Link To Leon Trotsky's "Literature And Revolution" Webpage.

Commentary

In a recent posting I reviewed detective novelist supreme Raymond Chandler’s late work (1958), “Playback”, the last in his series of Philip Marlowe stories. (See archives, September 20, 2009.) In that review I mentioned (as I have in several previous reviews of other books in Chandler’s Marlowe series) a number of positive attributes about Marlowe that I found appealing. For starters: his sense of personal honor in a modern world (the 1930’s, 40’s and 50’s) that laughed at such old-fashioned notions; his gritty intrepidness in search of ‘rough’ justice in a messy world; his amazing, almost superhuman, ability to take a punch or seven for the good of the cause; and, his minimally class conscious and sometimes barely hidden contempt for the traditional social hierarchy and its police authority. In response, I received an e-mail from a reader, an ardent socialist-feminist fellow admirer of Leon Trotsky, who took me to task for my characterizations and argued that I had it all wrong both as to Marlowe’s virtues and to his so-called (her description) anti-authoritarian posture.

In passing, the reader deeply discounted those attributes where I put a plus, deplored even the idea of the possibility that a future socialist society would have room for such attributes as mentioned above and that Marlowe’s attitude toward women was ‘primitive’ (her description). While one would be hard pressed, very hard-pressed, to include Marlowe, with his very quaint but macho attitude toward women reflecting the mores of an earlier age, as a champion of women’s emancipation and he became over time a little shopworn in his sense of honor, common sense, ability to take a punch and lay off the booze the reader missed the point of my critique. Or rather she is much too dogmatic in her sense of “political correctness” as it applies to the literary front. Thus this little commentary is intended not so much to clear the air as to posit several ideas for future discussion.

I hate to invoke the name of Leon Trotsky, the intrepid Russian revolutionary, hard-working Soviet official, well-regarded political pamphleteer, and astute literary critic into this discussion but in that last role I think he had some useful things to say. Without a doubt Trotsky could have made his mark solely on the basis of his literary criticism, witness his Marxist masterpieces “Literature and Revolution” and “Literature and Art”. What makes Trotsky’s literary analysis so compelling is not whether he is right or wrong about the merits of any particular writer. In fact, many times, as in the case of the French writer Celine and some of the Russian poets, he was, I think, wrong. But rather, that he approached literary criticism from a materialist basis rooted in what history, and that essentially meant capitalist history, when he analyzed characters, the plausibility of various plots and the lessons to be drawn about “human nature” put forth by any given writer.

This is no mere genuflection on my part to a revolutionary leader whose work I hold in high regard but a recognition that capitalism has given us some much distorted concepts of what human nature is, or can be, all about. That is the core of the genius of Trotsky’s sharp pen and wit. That is why he is still very readable, for the most part, today. Unless it is question of political import, like the struggle inside Russia in the early 1920’s over the preferential establishment of a school of “proletarian culture” supported by the Soviet state that was bandies about by likes of fellow Bolsheviks Bukarin and Zinoviev, Trotsky did not spend much time diagramming any but the most general outline of the contours of what the future socialist society, its habits, manners and morals would look like. He did, and this is central in this discussion, spend a great deal of time on what capitalism had and would bequeath a socialist state. Including both vices and virtues.

Not to belabor a point this is the link between Leon Trotsky and one fictional Philip Marlowe. Trotsky accepted that personal honor had a place as a societal goal and as a matter of social hygiene. The parameters of that sense of honor naturally would be different under a social regime that was based on use value rather than the struggle for profit margins. Certainly Trotsky’s biography, particularly that last period in the 1930’s when he appeared to be tilting at windmills, demonstrates that he had a high moral code that drove him. Certainly the word intrepid is not out of place here, as well. Hardworking, hard-driving, a little bit gruff, but in search of some kind of justice. Those, my friend are the links that are the basic premise of a socialist society as it evolves out of capitalist society. As well as individual initiative, a sense of fairness, and well-placed scorn for established authority and the time-worn clichés about the limits of human nature.

Do I draw the links here too closely? Perhaps. Although Marlowe has his own version of ‘tilling at windmills’ in search of some kind of rough justice and vindication for all those knocks on the head one cannot deny that he does not challenge bourgeois society except in the most oblique way. He will not rail against General Sternwood’s oil derricks. He will not lead a crusade against the old order in his search for the elusive Velma. He is if anything very Victorian in his attitude toward women, good or bad. (Chandler’s Marlowe and Trotsky are both men of another era in their personal attitudes toward women, although Trotsky was light-years ahead on the political front). Nor is Marlowe the prototype for the ‘new socialist man’. But he remains a very appealing fictional character nevertheless. Who is your favorite fictional character, detective or otherwise? Let the discussion continue.

*Not All Phillip Marlowes Are Created Equal- Raymond Chandler's "Playback"

Click on Title To Link To Raymond Chandler Web page.

Book Review

Playback, Raymond Chandler, Vintage Press, New York, 1988

I have mentioned, in passing, in previous reviews (see archives) that not all of the classic detective novelist Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowes are born equal. The definitive screen role, probably the way Chandler’s Marlowe is most widely known, of course, is that of Humphrey Bogart in the "Big Sleep". Others like Dick Powell and, later in the 1970’s, Elliott Gould kept Bogie in pretty good company with their interpretations of Marlowe as the world-weary private detective who sees things through to the end, especially when he screws up an assignment. It's professional ethics, you know. But mainly Marlowe is intrepid and that carries him a long way. That characteristic helped define the noir detective. From that perspective, Robert Mitchum and James Garner were less successful in their respective interpretations on that very point.

That said, apparently, not all classic Raymond Chandler novels are born equal either. This late, perhaps, final Phillip Marlowe adventure (published in 1958) seems to have run out of steam both as to the Marlowe character and to plot. One would have thought Phillip Marlowe, forever literarily associated with Los Angeles and its means streets, would be right at home in his search, at the request of a local lawyer, for the inevitable `missing woman' ("dame", "frill", "frail" for the non-politically correct types) who is “on the lam”. There is plenty of sparse but functional dialogue, physical action and a couple of plot twists, particularly around the identity of the above-mentioned "dame" and the motives for her movements.

As always, have no fear, the intrepid Marlowe will figure it out in the end and some kind of 'rough' justice will prevail. At this point in the Phillip Marlowe series, however, our shamus has been around the block more than a few times but he still is punching away at the 'bad guys' and the absurdity of the modern world. But here, in the 1950’s Southern California milieu that is very quickly losing any of its pioneer spirit and has gone ‘soft’, Marlowe seems out of place. His world has lost its bearings and the strength has been sapped out of such virtues as personal honor, individual effort and chasing after windmills. Hell, old Marlowe goes to bed with the lady client (a no-no in the old days), is considerate and respectful of the police (a definite no-no for any self-respecting private eye) and, at the end, is wistfully thinking about an old love that has reentered the picture. Phillip, where did you go wrong?

How does this one compare with the other Marlowe volumes? Give me those background oil derricks churning out the wealth while looking for General Sternwood's Rusty Regan in "The Big Sleep" or the run down stucco flats in some shady places in pursuit of Moose's Velma in "Farewell, My Lovely" any day. Nevertheless, as always with Chandler, you get high literature (including, as always, some choice metaphors) in a plebeian package. Phillip Marlowe, RIP.

Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Corner Boys Grow Up- Richard Widmark’s The Street With No Name.

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the 1940s crime noir The Street With No Name.

DVD Review

The Street With No Name, starring Richard Widmark, 1948

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip-synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.).

Some, like the film reviewed here, The Street With No Name, starring well-regarded bad guy character actor Richrad Widmark, while classified as crime noir are no more than propaganda films. In this case a paean to the FBI, to its so-called scientific effectiveness, and gritty no-nonsense crime fighting personnel, and to its unlamented (for civil libertarians, anti-fascists, and just plain, garden variety believers that the cops, local, state and federal need to be reined in) founder and long time chief, J. Edgar Hoover. Interspersed throughout the film, including an introduction that had an early docu-drama quality to it, are various pieces of footage touting the efficiencies of the organization in the battle against crime, in this case street crime, not the more notorious “red scare” political crimes that it was infamous for, and that its efforts helped cause a political ice age in America in the 1950s

Without addressing the propaganda aspect of the film further, after all in the end every crime noir is about some aspect of how crime does not pay, this one is saved by three things, Richard Widmark’s performance as a tough post-World War II gangster on the make trying to parlay those organizational skills learned in the war-time military. You know, standing around and waiting, here for the next criminal caper, acknowledgement of hierarchy, here Widmark is the max-daddy boss, and, oh yes, how to use weapons, and use them to deadly purpose.

The long and short of it was that just after World War II there was no shortage of corner boys looking to make a score. I know of corner boys from back in my own working class neighborhood later, in the 1950s, but their stuff was penny-ante compared to the serious massed armed robberies (of the Mayfair swells, mainly) that Widmark planned and executed. The plot thus evolves around a cat and mouse game to break up this gang after a spree of murder and mayhem that draws the FBI in. Of course bringing in an agent-informer, having him win Widmark’s confidence (for a while), putting him in right in the center of harm’s way, and also, in the end, winning against the mob finishes the story. Oh, except, crime does not pay. Yes, we get it.

Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night-Come On Now, Get With The Program- Crime, I Repeat, Crime Does Not Pay- Richard Basehart’s “Tension-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a site that reviews and details the plot lines of crime noir films

DVD Review

Tension, starring Richard Basehart, Audrey Totter, Barry Sullivan, Paramount Pictures, 1950

No question I am a film noir, especially a crime film noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy: films like Out Of the Past, Gilda, The Lady From Shang-hai, and The Big Sleep need no additional comment from me as their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass, or as in Gilda a double nod for the plot and for the femme fatale. (Be still my heart, at the thought of Rita Hayworth, ah, dancing and singing, okay lip synching, and looking, well, fetching while doing those difficult tasks.) The film under review, 1950’s Tension, falls somewhere in the grey area, the plot line while it started out with a certain amount of promise got dragged in the end toward a standard police procedural, a kiss of death for most crime noir films in my book. And the femme fatale is neither fetching (a la Rita) nor wicked (except for an involvement in murder and mayhem, but they all, the femme fatales that is, are involved in that, one way or the other, it comes with the territory).

A quick review of the plot will explain my bewilderment at where to place this one in the crime noir pantheon. Warren (Richard Basehart), a Walter Middy-type, married to Claire (Audrey Totter), a second-rate gold-digger who attached herself to Warren in harder times (her harder times) out in Southern California when that locale was becoming the homeland of the dreams- the post-World War II suburban sun-drenched tract dreams. And Warren is a prime number one prospect for that dream working nights like a mad man to get Claire those things he promised her, or half of them anyway. But Claire, the little round-heels, is looking for speedier stuff now that she is settled into a good thing, and a plaint husband. And sweetheart Claire is flouting her stuff right in front of Warren with a guy of unknown resources (Barney) with some dough, a nice car, and a place on the beach in up-scale Malibu to sun herself. Well, a girl has to look out for herself, a round-heels girl anyway, right?

The plot thickens when Warren, no longer content to be a door-mat, decides to kill somebody over this transgression (Barney, heaven’s no, not lovely, wicked, maybe just misunderstood Claire). The long and short of it is that after planning the perfect murder by changing his identity (new idea, right?) he gets cold feet, as Walter Middys do, or maybe a slug of rationality that maybe, just maybe, sweet Claire ain’t worth it and good riddance. Especially after, as part of his change of identity, he meets a honey, Mary (played by the leggy Cyd Charisse), who is more his speed and, well, is happy to think about that suburban house and that white picket fence with 2.2 kids, and a dog, one dog.

But see the story would become really tedious if somebody didn’t kill somebody, and so old Barney winds up dead. And of course Warren (or his changed identity self, Paul) is fit six ways to Sunday for the frame. Someone is going to the chair for this one, this murder one job, and Warren better start making a list of his last requests.

Except of course, crime noir or not, guys who don’t commit murder and mayhem are not stepping off for such crimes, at least in 1950s movies. And that is where the tedious police procedural aspect of this film meets low-rent femme fatale when L.A.’s finest get on the case and “entrap” if you can believe that about the police in 1950, or now, everybody connected with the crime (except of course, the deceased Barney, although he too might have had a motive, who knows). And guess who is going to take the fall for this one? Well, guess. But you could see where this one was headed from a long way off. Hey didn’t Phillip Marlowe work these slumming L.A. streets in those days. Taking a little off-hand beating before swinging the scales of justice back where they belong. He could have been used here to tell Claire what’s what, and to spice this one up.

**Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- Sherlock Holmes Meets Iron Man- “Sherlock Holmes”-A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the movie trailer for Sherlock Holmes.

DVD Review

Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Junior and Jude Law, 2010

Hollywood (and elsewhere) has given up many interpretations of Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective (along with ace companion, Doctor Watson) since the time of the acerbic, arch, understated Basil Rathbone days along with a bumbling Doctor Watson in the 1930s. Since then, depending on the times, he has been everything from a “hippie” dope fiend to the the present protean man performance by Robert Downey, Junior. In an age when every action film has to meet the Iron Man comic book standard, or better, it is, apparently, no longer possible to portray the magi of Baker Street as a stay-at-home bookish intellectual and mere man of scientific deduction. He must now also be the avenging angel (and old Doc as well), well versed in the martial arts and other forms of self-defense against the criminal element and in this film the besieged British Empire.

Now, normally, I would not review this kind of film, although I am always happy to watch anything that Robert Downey, Junior has a part in. He is just a very interesting actor to watch in the line of Humphrey Bogart, Paul Newman, Jeff Bridges and the like. I, of course, thrilled to Conan Doyle’s stories ever since grade school where the teacher recited aloud Hounds of The Baskervilles to us. And I have read plenty of his other stories but usually the story line is nothing worthy of comment. This one, however, is slightly different.

Our finely-honed and alert pair in this caper are trying fend off the attempts by one Lord Blackburn to create an evil (of course) world-wide Empire and take control of the world’s resources. Hey, wait a minute this is mid-19th century England where the Britain Empire ruled the waves. Hello, that was the evil empire. Just ask the average India peasant or those in about fifty other places. And the way the evil Lord intended to reign (poor old Victoria be damned) is through what appears to be something like a “Rump” Parliament that seems to have some historic reflection back to Oliver Cromwell’s times. Now I know the British monarchy and its myriad supporters never got over that “interloper’s” transgressions but this is sublime, indeed. Naturally, the ever-hovering background presence of evil incarnate, Professor Moriarty, is wovened into the plot as well. So you can see what I have taken the time to write up a couple of sentences to review this film.

But here is my real problem with the story line. Now, traditionally, old Sherlock is not known to be enamored of the ladies, although not a few have swooned over him. No time for that stuff, old boy, right? Here though he seems to have a certain feeling for one very fetching villainess, and he coyly leaves her own devices. So what if she was Professor Moriarty’s agent. I told you she was fetching, real fetching. In the parlance of the spy game old Sherlock could have “turned” her into a double agent. Sherlock wake up.

*Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” –A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of the movie trailer for "Rear Window."

DVD Review

Rear Window, starring Jimmie Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, Raymond Burr, directed by Sir Alfred Hitchcock, 1954

As I noted in a recent review of another of his movies, “Dial M For Murder”, at one time the great mystery movie director, Sir Alfred Hitchcock, was one of my favorite directors. Not that I was ever a big fan of the whodunit, “puzzle it out”, Agatha Christie-influenced part of the genre that he tended to use in his film work. I have always been more of a Raymond Chandler/ Phillip Marlowe swaggering detective “chasing after windmills” mystery guy. But visually, most of Alfred Hitchcock’s work has always left me gasping for breath until the end, even in those productions like the one under review here, “Real Window”, where the murder plot is pretty much laid out for you in advance and all you have to do is figure the key to the slip up that will bring the villain low.

The villain in this case is, as seen by photojournalist Jimmy Stewart from the rear window of his apartment in some Greenwich Village building while he is slowly recuperating from a serious injury, cast on leg, is none other than Perry Mason. Oops, wrong script, I mean Raymond Burr. Apparently Burr had had it with his nagging wife and therefore did what any self-respecting person would do with said spouse-get a divorce. No, no, this is the 1950s remember where marriage was forever or for as long as the nerves held up. The plot revolves around trying to link up Stewart'd rear-windowed observed suspicious behavior by Burr, find out the whereabouts of said wife, and lay a trap to catch this villain.

Wait a minute. How is Brother Stewart going to bring justice to the world when he is laid up in a cast? Oh, did I mention that he had a fiancé/Girl Friday. A fetching fiancé/Girl Friday, Grace Kelly. She is here to perform the leg work, and to do a little off-hand romancing. Along the way we are also treated to a little Hitchcock sociological study as he pans the “makings and doings” that are happening from the rear window in the other apartments. A sub-theme here is the alienated and lonely life of the crowded city. For the rest of the story you are on your own.

As always though I cannot leave this thing without mentioning the presence of Grace Kelly. I mentioned in the review of “Dial M For Murder” that in that film she was not as fetching as in other Hitchcock vehicles like “Rear Window” and “To Catch A Thief.” That comment still holds up after another viewing. Be still my heart. I would just note here, as I have in reviewing other works in which Ms. Kelly starred, that according to the gossip her real life husband, Prince Rainer, a man not given to open displays of sentiment, wept openly at her death. And now I know why.