Raymond Chandler's second Philip Marlowe novel has been filmed three times: first in disguise as the 1942 B-movie The Falcon Takes Over, next as the excellent noir thriller Murder My Sweet (1944) starring Dick Powell, and third as this elegant neo-noir with a perfectly cast Robert Mitchum, at 58 the oldest actor to play Marlowe. It appeared during a period of nostalgia for the interwar years (along with The Great Gatsby, The Sting, The Way We Were, Chinatown) and is set in 1941 during the months leading up to Pearl Harbor. To a bluesy score by David Shire, Marlowe goes down the mean streets of a Los Angeles lit by John A Alonzo to resemble paintings by Edward Hopper. He's searching for Velma, the missing moll of gangster Moose Malloy, and following Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak for the Yankees. He's a weary figure, aware that his chivalric values are becoming unfashionable in a changing world. Character takes precedence over suspense in this elegiac movie.

Charlotte Rampling is a classy femme fatale; pulp novelist Jim Thompson, enjoying brief recognition in his twilight years, plays her elderly husband; John Ireland and Harry Dean Stanton are splendidly contrasted homicide cops; Sylvia Miles gives an Oscar-winning performance as a boozy old broad. Director Dick Richards was one of the major talents to emerge in the early 1970s, but after three outstanding pictures – the western The Culpepper Cattle Company, the beguiling road movie Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins and Farewell, My Lovely - he faded away.