Raymond Chandler Movies

Sin City creator Frank Miller adapts author Raymond Chandler's brooding noir novella set in 1940s Los Angeles and following the adventures of legendary gumshoe Philip Marlowe. Clive Owen stars. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Filmed for television, Once You Meet a Stranger is a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, using the same Patricia Highsmith novel as its source but transforming the protagonists into females. A chance meeting brings together former child star Sheila Gaines (Jacqueline Bisset) and the deceptively charming social butterfly Margo Anthony (Theresa Russell). As the ladies converse, two major facts come to light: Sheila is saddled with an ex-husband who refuses to give him a divorce, while Margo despises her wealthy mother and wishes her dead. In what seems to be a playful hypothesis, Margo suggests that she and Sheila "trade murders"; she will kill Sheila's former husband, Sheila will do in Margo's mom, and the authorities won't be any the wiser. Figuring that Margo is a harmless eccentric at best and a nutcase at worse, Sheila laughs off the notion of such an "arrangement"--but she isn't laughing when her troublesome ex-hubby turns up dead! If you've seen Strangers on a Train, you know how this one turns out, so best to find another way to spend 95 minutes. Once You Meet a Stranger originally aired September 25, 1996 on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Smart-Aleck Kill is one of six hour-long Philip Marlowe episodes originally telecast in 1986 on the HBO cable service. Powers Boothe stars as Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's quintessential 1940s hard-boiled detective. This time he's investigating a possible murder...that occured nearly twenty years earlier. Back in the silent-film era, a famous movie idol reportedly died of narcotics addiction (shades of Wallace Reid). Marlowe is hired to find out whether or not the "official" story was part of a massive cover-up. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Robert Mitchum reprises his role as Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe from Farewell, My Lovely, in this misconceived remake of Howard Hawks's classic 1946 film -- transferring the setting from 1940s California to 1970s London. Marlowe is hired by a rich and dying General Sternwood (James Stewart) to find out who is blackmailing him. Marlowe then meets Sterwood's daughters -- the crazy and degenerate Camilla (Candy Clark) and the more even-tempered Charlotte (Sarah Miles). Opening up a can of worms, Marlowe unveils a collection of unsavory characters -- Eddie Mars (Oliver Reed), an inveterate gambler having an affair with Charlotte; Joe Brody (Edward Fox), Camilla's ex-lover; and Agnes (Joan Collins), a sexy bookstore clerk. The plot becomes even more chaotic when it is found that Camilla has been posing in the nude for pornographer Arthur Geiger (John Justin). When Geiger turns up dead, Camilla becomes implicated in Geiger's murder. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

"It's OK with me...." Applying his deconstructive eye to the "film noir" tradition, Robert Altman updated Raymond Chandler in his 1973 version of Chandler's novel, The Long Goodbye. Smart-aleck, cat-loving private eye Philip Marlowe (Elliott Gould) is certain that his friend Terry Lennox (Jim Bouton) isn't a wife-killer, even after the cops throw Marlowe in jail for not cooperating with their investigation into Lennox's subsequent disappearance. Once he gets out of jail, Marlowe starts to conduct his own search when he discovers that mysterious blonde Eileen Wade (Nina Van Pallandt), who hired him to find her alcoholic novelist husband Roger (Sterling Hayden), lives on the same Malibu street as the absent Lennox and his deceased spouse. As numerous variations on the title song play in unexpected places, Marlowe encounters a shady doctor (Henry Gibson), a bottle-wielding gangster (director Mark Rydell), and a guard aping Barbara Stanwyck (among other stars), before heading to Mexico to stumble onto the truth once and for all. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

In one of Alfred Hitchcock's suspense classics, tennis pro Guy Haines (Farley Granger) chances to meet wealthy wastrel Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker) on a train. Having read all about Guy, Bruno is aware that the tennis player is trapped in an unhappy marriage to to wife Miriam (Laura Elliott) and has been seen in the company of senator's daughter Ann Morton (Ruth Roman). Baiting Guy, Bruno reveals that he feels trapped by his hated father (Jonathan Hale). As Guy listens with detached amusement, Bruno discusses the theory of "exchange murders." Suppose that Bruno were to murder Guy's wife, and Guy in exchange were to kill Bruno's father? With no known link between the two men, the police would be none the wiser, would they? When he reaches his destination, Guy bids goodbye to Bruno, thinking nothing more of the affable but rather curious young man's homicidal theories. And then, Guy's wife turns up strangled to death. Co-adapted by Raymond Chandler from a novel by Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train perfectly exemplifies Hitchcock's favorite theme of the evil that lurks just below the surface of everyday life and ordinary men. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The definitive Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall vehicle, The Big Sleep casts Bogart as Raymond Chandler's cynical private eye Philip Marlowe. Summoned to the home of the fabulously wealthy General Sternwood (Charles Waldron), Marlowe is hired to deal with a blackmailer shaking down the General's sensuous, thumb-sucking daughter Carmen (Martha Vickers). This earns Marlowe the displeasure of Carmen's sloe-eyed, seemingly straight-laced older sister Vivian (Bacall), who is fiercely protective of her somewhat addled sibling. As he pursues the case at hand, Marlowe gets mixed up in the murder of Arthur Geiger (Theodore von Eltz), a dealer in pornography. He also runs afoul of gambling-house proprietor Eddie Mars (John Ridgely), who seems to have some sort of hold over the enigmatic Vivian. Any further attempts to outline the plot would be futile: the storyline becomes so complicated and convoluted that even screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthmann were forced to consult Raymond Chandler for advice (he was as confused by the plot as the screenwriters). When originally prepared for release in 1945, The Big Sleep featured a long exposition scene featuring police detective Bernie Ohls (Regis Toomey) explaining the more obscure plot details. This expository scene was ultimately sacrificed, along with several others, in favor of building up Bacall's part; for instance, a climactic sequence was reshot to emphasize sexual electricity between Bogart and Bacall, obliging Warners to replace a supporting player who'd gone on to another project. The end result was one of the most famously baffling film noirs but also one of the most successful in sheer star power. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This neat, fast-paced perfectly cast film noir reflects the hard-boiled, grim wit of the author of its screenplay, Raymond Chandler. Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd) returns from the war to find his wife Helen (Doris Dowling) having a party and in the arms of another man. Johnny and Helen have a terrible fight, and later Helen is found dead. Johnny must prove his innocence and he enlists the aid of Joyce Haywood (Veronica Lake), the ex-wife of Helen's lover. Pursued by the cops, and never sure if he is being set-up for the murder, Johnny finally solves the murder and clears his name. Alan Ladd is at his hard-boiled, no-nonsense best as Johnny and Veronica Lake is, as always, the perfect noir femme-fatale, mysterious and alluring. Nicely directed by George Marshall, the film moves with great pace to an exciting, satisfying conclusion. The screenplay, the only one written by Chandler directly for the screen, was nominated for an Academy Award. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

Directed by Billy Wilder and adapted from a James M. Cain novel by Wilder and Raymond Chandler, Double Indemnity represents the high-water mark of 1940s film noir urban crime dramas in which a greedy, weak man is seduced and trapped by a cold, evil woman amidst the dark shadows and Expressionist lighting of modern cities. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck) seduces insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) into murdering her husband to collect his accident policy. The murder goes as planned, but after the couple's passion cools, each becomes suspicious of the other's motives. The plan is further complicated when Neff's boss Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), a brilliant insurance investigator, takes over the investigation. Told in flashbacks from Neff's perspective, the film moves with ruthless determinism as each character meets what seems to be a preordained fate. Movie veterans Stanwyck, MacMurray, and Robinson give some of their best performances, and Wilder's cynical sensibility finds a perfect match in the story's unsentimental perspective, heightened by John Seitz's hard-edged cinematography. Double Indemnity ranks with the classics of mainstream Hollywood movie-making. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

In this melodrama, a doctor returns to his home town to set out his shingle. He was born on the poor side of town and so has had a life-long anger towards the town's wealthiest family. When the daughter of this family comes in for treatment, he finds himself faced with a dilemma. A bout with meningitis has left her deaf. He has a new drug that can cure deafness. Will he use it, or will he let his anger prevent him from helping her? ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The plot of the RKO Radio programmer The Falcon Takes Over will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has seen the 1944 Philip Marlowe mystery Murder My Sweet: indeed, both films were based on the same Raymond Chandler novel, Farewell My Lovely. It all begins when brutish prison escapee Moose Malloy (Ward Bond) forces nervous Broadwayite Goldie Locke (Allen Jenkins) to drive him to a posh nightclub, where Moose hopes to be reunited with his old girlfriend. Unable to find his elusive sweetheart, Moose tears the joint apart, obliging Goldie to flee for his life. As it happens, Goldie is the assisant of private eye Gay Lawrence (George Sanders), aka The Falcon, who has been hired by foppish socialite Lindsey Marriot (Hans Conried) to ransom a necklace stolen from Marriot's lady friend Diane Kenyon (Helen Gilbert). Shortly afterward, Marriot is murdered, and the Falcon discovers that there's an inextricable link between the dead man and the inimitable Moose Malloy. The rest of the film follows the plot convolutions set down by Chandler in Farewell My Lovely, carefully retailed to suit the breezy urbanity of George Sanders as the Falcon. Though Murder My Sweet is the better of the two versions of the Chandler novel, The Falcon Takes Over has a few advantages of its own, notably the casting of future Oscar winner Ann Revere as blowzy murder suspect Jessie Florian. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi