murder my sweet

MURDER, MY SWEET (1944)

“Chandler took back the
book, making reading
another kind of cinema”
—James McCourt, Queer Street:
Rise and Fall of an American
Culture (1945-1985)

Claire Trevor’s absolutely definitive performance in “Murder, My Sweet”—sets the stage for murdering the old genre style of autobiography.

It’s Fag Noir “Farewell, My Lovely” to the same old portrait and historical biographies—Chandler the modernist transumptively transmogrifying biography into film. 

Fag Noir motion picture biographies disguised as novels by Chandler—are deeply encoded with queer cinematic theory:

“How long can you stay?”

“Doin’ what?”

“Remembering”

“A dollar gets you remembered in this town. You a dick?” 

“You ever seen a dick playing solitaire with his own money?”  (The Lady in the Lake)

“The blonde was strong with madness of love or fear, or a mixture of both, or maybe she was just strong.” 
(The Big Sleep)

“I like small, close-built men. They never seem to be afraid of anything. Come and see me some time.”
(The High Window)

Manuel Puig’s novels like “Kiss of the Spider Woman” are all motion-picture dialog—the same with “Heartbreak Tango.” 

“In Chandler, faggots are
always vile, sinister, filthy
and submissive.”
—James McCourt, Queer Street:
Rise and Fall of an American
Culture (1945-1985)

Fag noir filmography is suffused with suppressed fag hysteria. Threatening to breakout of the closet—with poignant, authentically wrenching stories of male/male love and hate.

Chandler’s “funky-armpit panache” could easily turn into a campy, kitschy parody of Chandler’s style—but he makes a stylish jump from “The Little Sister” to “The Long Goodbye” his last masterpiece.

The idea of Chandler’s stylish fag noir filmic novels telling his autobiographical story—is “neurotic in hearts, sex-hungry in clubs and starved in spades.”

Chandler’s Marlowe is really himself—a man who thinks ”for” himself and nearly exclusively “of” himself. There’s this intra psychic Marlovian struggle going on all the time with Chander.

Fag noir writers tend to be excessively narcissistic—a common thread in most queenly and faggy lives. 

Except with Chandler’s fag noir filmography—it’s more than just pulp fiction or crime novels. 

It’s like having Philip Marlowe as one’s constant companion—a dishy doppelganger “dick,” a bitchy private eye and wise-ass bead-reading detective.