The Brasher Doubloon
                         
Director: John Brahm
Year: 1947
Rating: 5.5
If it had been Bogart or Powell, this might have a better reputation. They were the Marlowe's that we remember. Mitchum was ok as well - too old for the character but it's still Mitchum - one of his two Marlowe films is pretty good, the other feels like road kill. Robert Montgomery in Lady in the Lake smirked too much - at least his voice does - we never see him other than his reflection - taking POV too far. Gould as Marlowe in The Long Goodbye is a bit of a farce - I like the film but Marlowe he is not. Marlowe saw himself as a knight errant, pulling out corruption by the roots when needed, leaving it to fester when he saw fit. He could not be bought. Not even by a pretty face. Marlowe is played by George Montgomery in this one. He conveys noir as well as a day at the beach house does. Bogart and Powell understood noir. It seeped out of their bones. The clipped manner of speech, the dog weary eyes, the two-day growth, the sarcastic wit, the sex appeal. Montgomery has none of that. He feels like a door-to-door salesman of lingerie trying to flirt with the lady of the house.   



This is based on Raymond Chandler's High Window - his third novel after The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely (Murder, My Sweet in film). He was a slow writer. His first short story written in 1933 took him a year. In his life he only wrote six novels, one more than Hammett wrote. The two of them are often paired together as the two who made noir high-class literature. Of course, they didn't think of it as noir. They were just detective stories to them. Hammett came first and Chandler followed in his footsteps. Both were alcoholics. That ruined Hammett who came down with writer's block for his entire life after the Thin Man in 1934. But with Chandler, his writing career was due to his drinking. He had dabbled in poetry for years going back to his school days in England, getting some of it published but after years of bouncing around - serving in the trenches in WWI - getting married at 35 to a 53-year-old woman - the stepmother of a friend of his.



He finally settled down as an accountant at an oil company and found out he was good at it. And honest. He discovered that his boss was embezzling and turned him in. When his next boss died, he got the top job in the finance department and was making good money even after the Depression hit.  He gave up writing. He took up screwing around and drinking. The drinking got so out of hand that they fired him. He was in his forties, soon running out of money, selling his possessions and trying to figure out what to do. On a trip he picked up a copy of a detective magazine, read the stories and thought I can do that. And he became a writer. Of a genre that he initially had no respect for. Lots of short stories for Black Mask before he decided to write The Big Sleep in 1939.



When he sent in High Window to his publisher, he attached a note that he didn't think it would sell very well because nothing happens in it and there is no action. And it didn't sell. In the same year this came out in 1942, the first two film versions of his books came out. But not under Marlowe's name. The Falcon did a version of Farewell, My Lovely titled The Falcon Takes Over and even strangerHigh Window was the basis of Time to Kill, part of the Michael Shayne series with Lloyd Nolan. Considering there were tons of Michael Shayne books by Brett Haliday, it is a mystery. Chandler was right about nothing much happening in the book. Marlowe comes across three dead bodies but the rest of it is just him poking his nose around till he figures out what it is all about. And then he sits on it. He doesn't bother to tell the police. Just walks out after delivering the news to the killer. Sends the girl to her parents in Wichita. Doesn't lay a hand on her. Knight Errantes don't take advantage of screwed up women.



This keeps the basis of the book and most of the characters, but changes all the detail into a much more conventional detective film. They turn the vulnerable woman in the book into a near femme-fatale who is ready to seduce Marlowe for the Brasher Doubloon. They even change the killer. They don't even use my favorite bit of dialogue from the book.

“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”

That is about much more than this particular lady (who doesn't make it to the film), but it is how Chandler felt about LA and Hollywood. Up close there was so much rot. The High Window is not Chandler's best but it is a beautiful read. There are passages that just make you stop and go damn, to be able to write like that.

“A check girl in peach-bloom Chinese pajamas came over to take my hat and disapprove of my clothes. She had eyes like strange sins.”



Marlowe is called in by the wealthy Mrs. Murdock (Florence Bates) to find a missing rare coin, the Brasher Doubloon. $20 a day. She gives him a check for $100 and looks like she just got electro-shock treatment for the effort. Her secretary is Merle (Nancy Guild), a pretty girl who looks like she is stuck to glue and can't get away. There is the spoiled son as well. Everywhere Marlow goes he finds a dead body. It is getting to be a habit. They cut the book in about half coming in at 72 minutes. It is better than its reputation but not by much. It is directed by one of my favorite B directors, John Brahm who made three terrific B horror films - The Lodger, Hanover Square and The Undying Monster. If only he had Bogart.

“She had a lot of face and chin. She had pewter-colored hair set in a ruthless permanent, a hard beak and moist eyes with the sympathetic expression of wet stones.”