Murder, My Sweet is an interesting film noir as it presents new elements that we haven’t seen in the ones we’ve watched so far. It starts off with the usual private eye (Philip Marlowe) who is accused of murder and we go into flashback to see how he got into this predicament. All the classic material is present: bright lights of the noir city, the fast-talking, witty, money-grubbing, playful-at-times protagonist, the beautiful yet manipulative femme fatale, dingy workplace, shadows; it’s all there.
However, new aspects are also introduced: our protagonist didn’t commit any crime this time (although he still agreed to kill a man), and we finally see a happy ending where he gets the girl. Something else that I noticed was when Philip is passed out in the bed, this is the first time we see a noir “hero” sick and in such a vulnerable state. He actually loses his mind and goes crazy. We are caught off guard because we’ve always known our protagonist as being smooth and calm no matter the situation.
Other such aspects are the “black pool” transitions when Philip gets knocked out and the “spider web vision” he sees when he’s in a daze. There is also the dream sequence where he’s hallucinating walking through doors and falls down a black hole (which reminded me of that scene from Vertigo). This almost seems out of place in a noir film because we’ve never seen these stylistic choices done before. This film wasn’t afraid to play around with the genre – hence the title – and stray from the norm just a bit enough to see what it was capable of. And good thing, too, because we probably wouldn’t have such modern classics as Sin City and Watchmen. It’s interesting to see where these ideas stem from, even as early as 1944.
