Farewell, My Lovely

Last seen, a nightclub dancer (the joint is under new management), after that a dyke madam’s tart, then a fairy princess, the judge’s wife (he the big political power in Los Angeles, an old cuckold), finally and above all a gangster’s mistress (he runs the city).

A string of murders shield her from detection.

Joe DiMaggio and America before Pearl Harbor, Hitler in Russia makes headlines, Tokyo...

Marlowe, tired in July, “holed up in a dingy hotel ducking the police,” relates most of it to Lt. Nulty.

Richards borrows from Polanski (Chinatown) to pay Powell (Murder, My Sweet), all profit.

Jay Cocks of Time had no use for it, “a handsome mediocrity” (Richard Eder, New York Times), Variety panned it.

A perfect masterpiece.

March or Die

A film of films, as Florey’s Outpost in Morocco is a film of paintings.

The main lines of argument are extended from Frankenheimer’s The Train and Dearden’s Khartoum, in the continuum of expression there will be recognized Douglas’ Only the Valiant, Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia, Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Mann’s El Cid and Endfield’s Zulu, among other works.

Maslin of the New York Times described the plot as “complicated”, reviews were generally negative.

Man, Woman and Child

Mallarmé’s “child of an Idumæan night” to an English professor in Southern California with a wife and two kids.

As richly imagined as might be, in a style comparable to Narizzano’s Choices at a similar location.

The wife is an editor for the university press, the author she blue-pencils has the great line, “look, I mean, really, I’m just not good at this, you know, I do not approach women well, I mean I don’t, it seems I’m too direct, maybe that’s why I write non-fiction.”

Nunnally Johnson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit supplies considerable material.