Philip Marlowe series

Critique • At the movies

Merle (Nancy Guild) gets the drop on Marlowe (George Montgomery) in The High Window adaptation.

Follow the money

The Brasher Doubloon (1947): Film, 72 minutes; director John Brahm; writers Dorothy Bennett and Leonard Praskins; featuring George Montgomery, Nancy Guild, Conrad Janis, Florence Bates

When Hollywood got around to making an adaptation of The High Window (1942) that would actually feature Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe character, it still couldn't bring itself to use the original title. I'm not sure why. Is The Brasher Doubloon supposed to sound more intriguing? Was the rarity and value of the coins in real life well known back then? Was referring to a high window in the title thought to be giving away too much of the story's conclusion.

Whatever the reason, you might expect the 1947 film to be a step up from the 1942 adaptation with the detective called Michael Shayne. And it is in some ways. Though not aways.

For one thing, this film's longer running time allows a less frantic race through the plot. But it's only eleven minutes longer, so this slightly more relaxed presentation still allows only the highlights of Chandler's story to be featured. As with the earlier film version, the narrative is slimmed down with the subplots cut out.

Another way it's better, it's shot like the film noir classics of the day, with the characters slinking in and out of contrasting light and shadows, with artistic camera angles framing scenes suspensefully , and without the happy-go-lucky ambience of the earlier version.

Trailer for The Brasher Doubloon, an adaptation of Chandler's The High Window.

George Montgomery strives for a grittier Marlowe, as he dashes off variations on sardonic lines lifted from the novel. He's partly successful. He's closer to being the hard-boiled detective than cheerful Lloyd Nolan was in 1942, but with his laidback demeanor he comes nowhere near the complex, moody character we know from the books. There's still something bland or made-up about him.

Maybe it's just that his Marlowe can't stack up again the iconic 1940s depictions by Humphrey Bogart, Dick Powell and Robert Montgomery (no relation) that preceded this production.

The worst departure from The High Window novel is the character of Merle Davis. She's supposed to be a timid, mentally disturbed woman whom Marlowe rescues from abuse—showing a new side of the detective—but in The Brasher Doubloon she becomes a Lauren Bacall-style, seductive love interest for Marlowe.

So, a small step up for adaptations of The High Window but a step down—or sideways at best—for Philip Marlowe movies in general.

— Eric

Critique • At the movies

1942, 1942b, 1944, 1946, 1947, 1947b, 1969, 1973, 1975, 1978, 1998, 2022