Los Angeles, 1939. From the window of his sparsely furnished office, Detective Philip Marlowe gazes out over the city below. We feel calm, but expectant. In fact, the private does not have to wait long before a mysterious young woman makes her entrance. Can he find his lover, a no less mysterious young man? Frank questions, cryptic answers. The tone is set: this film noir will be both pastiche and rereading, between homage and playfulness. In Marlowe, Neil Jordan revisits an emblematic character of the venerable genre. The Irish filmmaker has already brilliantly diverted the codes of film noir in The Crying Game (The cry of tears), which won him the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. We were able to speak to him exclusively.
Philip Marlowe is the creation of novelist Raymond Chandler. However, Neil Jordan’s film is based on a novel, The Black-Eyed Blonde, by his compatriot John Banville, a writer who won many prizes, including the Booker. William Monahan, Oscar winner for his screenplay The Departed (Cloudy Agents), by Martin Scorsese, signs the adaptation.
“John is a good friend. I had read and liked his novel, especially his way of appropriating Philip Marlowe by giving him Irish origins. But I did not plan to make a film out of it, ”explains Neil Jordan, joined at his home in Dublin by videoconference.
The film stars fellow countryman Liam Neeson, who is collaborating with the director for the fourth time after High Spirits (ghosts are crazy), Breakfast on Pluto And Michael Collins (who won the Golden Lion in Venice, where Marlowe was unveiled last fall).Diane Kruger, Jessica Lange, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Alan Cumming and Quebecer François Arnaud, accomplice of the filmmaker since the series The Borgias (The Borgias), complete the cast.
“In this case, it was Liam who proposed the project to me by submitting the screenplay written by William, whom I admire enormously. I reworked the script a bit, especially the ending, which I’m proud of: I don’t remember having seen a film noir that ended exactly like that. »
Without revealing the content, we will confirm that the outcome is indeed ingenious… and enjoyable.
A scathing subtext
Another successful aspect of Marlowe lies in its context, namely Hollywood. The missing man (François Arnaud) was, among other things, a props man for a studio. A studio, it appears, which does more than create dreams. And out of that background comes a scathing subtext about the corrupt nature of Hollywood.
“It was absolutely and completely wanted, admits the director of Byzantine. When you’ve made as many films as I have, especially on the independent circuit, you often don’t know where the money is coming from, or sometimes where it’s going — not to me, anyway! Major studios like Warner Bros. are in good standing and obey their masters on Wall Street, but small studios can be used for money laundering, and the executives never know…”
For the record, Neil Jordan had a long and successful relationship with Warner Bros., which produced Interview with the Vampire (Interview with a Vampire), The Butcher Boy (the butcher boyprize for directing in Berlin), Michael Collins And The Brave One (The test of courage).
To go back to Marlowe, as we mentioned, this is not the filmmaker’s first foray into film noir. Before The Crying Game, mona-lisa also contained elements from the genre. Note that in both cases, Neil Jordan diverted the codes of black by injecting an LGBTQ dimension into the stories. If the queer component is anecdotal in Marlowe (Alan Cumming’s gangster), the approach is no less oblique, and therefore more interesting than if it were a simple exercise in reverential style.
“In reality, I’m not particularly fond of black films,” says Neil Jordan. It’s just that… all the films I make are dark, dark, full of shadows, literally and figuratively. I like three-dimensional characters who are led to their doom, or who find themselves embroiled in an inextricable conflict… I like complexity, I like darkness, I like stories that don’t necessarily end well, or those where the good takes on an unexpected dimension…”
This is the case in Marlowe, the “good” triumphing through condemnable actions. The usual archetypes of the genre are there, from the private detective to the femme fatale (Diane Kruger), but he is aging and she, not necessarily the incarnate evil behind a skilfully maintained facade of ambiguity.
“It was part of this assumed playful side, of this desire to inject a certain humor, a beautiful spirit, into Chandler’s universe. In the same vein, I didn’t want to shoot in black and white, as one might have expected. On the contrary, I wanted the film to be bathed in color and light. I opted for a classic direction, but not so much, with all these slow, elegant and sensual tracking shots: it was to give elegance, even luxuriance to the film. »
Here again, at the antipodes, on purpose, of the film noir of yesteryear.
The Neeson Factor
As the Los Angeles of that time no longer existed architecturally, Neil Jordan shot the exteriors in Spain. We only see fire.
“Recreating Los Angeles as the city was then was one of the challenges that convinced me to accept the project. The prospect of accompanying Liam in a reinterpretation of the character, the prospect of seeing what he would do with it, thrilled me even more: Marlowe’s sharp mind, all these fabulous dialogues… For a few years already, since Taken (Pick up), Liam is associated with action cinema, but his register is so much more extensive; we underestimate his comic gifts. »
In this regard, in a touch of “meta” humor, Neeson’s Marlowe blurts out at one point in the film, after a fight in which he had the upper hand: “I’m too old for this bullshit. “Given the actor’s recent filmography, it’s impossible not to smile.
Moreover, the film arouses and maintains from start to finish a feeling of complicity with the public: one initially believes to know what one will see, but the film proves with each turning skilful to thwart the a priori. Or the art of having fun with cinephilia.