Farewell, My Lovely (1975)

Joe DiMaggio is on a hitting streak and Philip Marlowe (Robert Mitchum) is hiding from the police at a cheap motel.  With his options limited, he calls Detective Nulty (John Ireland) and asks to talk.  "Come alone," he says.  When Nulty arrives, Marlowe lays out the story.  On a missing person job, he happened to meet Moose Malloy (Jack O'Halloran), a giant of a man who was just released from prison.  Moose is looking for his old flame, Velma, and hires Marlowe for the job.  Strangely, while Marlowe searches for Velma, everyone he meets seems to be searching for Moose.  Worse still, everyone who gives Marlowe a lead for finding Velma is murdered soon after.  Using a middleman, Marlowe finally arranged for Moose to talk to Velma on the phone.  No sooner did he and Moose arrive than gunmen tried to kill Moose.  Like in previous Marlowe movies, the body count is alarmingly high.  Some secrets must be kept with murder.

Robert Mitchum makes for a great Marlowe except for being too old by 20 years.  Mrs. Grayle (Charlotte Rampling) tries to seduce him shortly after the pair are introduced.  She is not troubled in the least when her husband witnesses their first kiss.  Granted, she is a stunner, but why is Marlowe so ready to have an affair with this married woman?  The biggest surprise of the movie was Sylvester Stallone as a hood in the employ of a Hollywood madam.

The plot is too convoluted.  That much of the film is a flashback where Marlowe is talking to Nulty, and apparently repeating their multiple interactions, just didn't work.  Some characters might have been better left out.  Though I like Harry Dean Stanton, his openly dirty cop never does anything dirty in the movie.  What was the point of that?  Better to cut the character and expand one of the others.  Georgie is almost Marlowe's sidekick, but he doesn't quite get enough development.

Strangely enough, Mitchum returned to the role of Marlowe only 3 years later, in The Big Sleep.  However, that movie takes place in the 1970s and has Marlowe living in London, not Los Angeles.  I wonder why they didn't just recast, since it clearly can't be a sequel.  Unless Marlowe time travels.

Just so-so.