In this film we see a man, Phillip, trying to isolate himself to a small remote town and leave his past behind. Unfortunately for him his past catches up to him, in the form of his old partner when he was a detective. His partner was working for a man who wants Phillip to go and find his old girlfriend who ironically is the wife of another old man she is plotting on. Phillip gets caught up in the middle of this woman, the femme fatale Velma’s, scheme in which she would get her husbands riches and run off with the money. Fortunately Phillip gets tips on and off of who she really is by her stepdaughter Ann and is able to decipher her evil plot before it can come together. In the end he ends up running off with Ann and the movie ends with them kissing in the back of a taxi.

    In “Murder My Sweet” we see a classic noir film in action. We have a detective get entwined in different conflict that revolve around him as gets deeper and deeper into the case. Now for the film it can be argued that there are two femme fatales in this film but I would stick with one, Helen or Velma. As a femme fatal would she does end up double crossing Marlowe but we do not find this out towards the very end. Marlowe admits many times he is not the brightest detective so during his investigation he is never able to piece together that he is on a wild goose chase which attests to his inability to really solve this crime. In other noir films our detectives are the best of the best where here we are left with a detective that only knows as much as the audience. What makes this film different from the others is that Marlowe has a happy ending after the bloody ending in which most of the people he comes into contact with meet their demise. I found this happy ending characteristic of the film very strange compared to all the other films we have watched up until this point. I was sure there was going to be another twist before the credits rolled but alas nothing. Perhaps the negative part of the ending was that he would be temporarily blind but this pales in comparison to other film’s protagonists.

In Murder My Sweet, Philip Marlow, was hired by an ex-con to track down his former girlfriend. He soon finds himself in a complex position after falling in love with this femme fatale. I found the film enjoyable and all the actors were perfect characters, the camera angles created pools of light throughout the film and moody silhouettes. These shadows and angles are one of the themes I’ve picked up watching film noir and are essential to these mysterious films. Even the first shot of this movie hits you with a glaring light in a dark room while Marlow is being questioned by the police. It was truly a beautiful piece of entertainment.

Murder, My Sweet starts in a strange camera angles in the darkness with a lamp where police usually shines at the criminal. This portray a sense darkness and mysterious. Then, Marlowe narrates what had happened to his client and the jade. The femme fatale, Helen Grayle is a tramp that marries to a high society man but she is always cheap and manipulated. Its seems she wants to turn Marlowe into a criminal. Compare to the femme fatale in Double Indemnity, the femme fatale in the Murder, My Sweet never success in seducing Marlowe to achieve her goal. As always, the main character in the noir film is a clever and slick person that able to make things straight at the end of the movie.

            After seeing the film Murder, My Sweet in class one of the moments that really stood out to me was when Philip Marlowe gets drugged and knocked out.  This is a similar occurrence to Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon getting drugged and knocked out.  While both films have the characters getting drugged and knocked out, the experiences couldn’t be more different from one another.  In The Maltese Falcon it’s almost as if Sam Spade isn’t affected by it that much and just wakes up a little while later.  In Murder, My Sweet you get a full on experience of Philip Marlowe’s drugging presented in a “Twilight Zone-ish” way, which is very effective.  With this type of approach, an audience can fully gauge what Marlowe is going through.  When Philip Marlowe finally wakes up you can almost feel and sense how groggy he is.  By incorporating the effects properly and using the story at hand, it makes for a great example of how certain effects can really help aid a story.