Murder, My Sweet (1944)

Directed by Edward Dmytryk
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(DVD, Warner Bros)

Serpentine story that follows private detective Philip Marlowe through the gritty streets of a big city in search of a murderer and a jade necklace. Along the way, he gets beat into unconsciousness a few times, seduces beautiful women, gets kidnapped and injected with drugs which make him have vivid nightmares, tangles with the police and eventually solves the case. Highly influential noir is very entertaining and stylized, but some of the dialogue, especially the narration, seems forced and just plain silly. I suppose the style has been spoofed so many times that it is hard to take seriously, even though at the time this was fresh and original.