Variety
A Cato of the Cruelties
R
AYMOND CHANDLER has,
in the past, written for the
Atlantic
on the ethics of Holly–
wood, just as the late Wendell
Willkie once wrote on ethics in
general for
The American Scholar.
There has been enough respect–
ability in the wares of these two
successful specialists in the Amer–
ican ethos to suit the upper-mid–
dlebrow market, and enough au–
thenticity in their attitudes to cov–
er the objections of litterateurs.
Philip Marlowe, private dick, is
our myth, the closest thing to flesh
and blood that Hollywood has .re–
cently seen fit to apotheosize.
Who, then, is this Marlowe and
what is his mighty line? To be
solemn first, Philip Marlowe is
as much of the existentialist hero
as modem America has stom–
ach for. We've become used to the
French version, but the term, like
pragmatism, means a
wa"
of philo–
sophizing rather than a body of
doctrine. It's a fruitful term, and
we should try to salvage it from the
purely cultic interpretation that
is threatening, through fear more
than anything else, to discredit its
legitimate use. Marlowe is the
American middle-class Existential–
ist, the People's Existentialist, you
might say, insofar as his function
cuts across class lines. The marks
of his integrity are a searing doubt
as
to
the motives of his fellow coun–
trymen-popularized by Bogart
with literary antecedents in Lard-
ner and many others-and a pro–
found awareness of fate. But the
red badge that sets him apart is
an almost Biblical faith in the val–
ue of decision. He is forever
rolling the stone uphill-a little
too sentimental and self-pitying for
a true Stoic, but an existentialist
nonetheless. Whatever the alterna–
tives, Marlowe acts and acts alone:
his life is all decision-a blind
inevitable moral energy plowing
through the wildest ambiguities al–
ways into the heart of insecurity
and danger.
Marlowe's world is ,the laissez–
faire liberal world turned inside–
out-a jungle of predatory crea–
tures making amusing patterns out
of their guilt and boredom, and
desperately lonely. On the surface,
nothing happens for obvious rea–
sons.
If
external amiability isn't
faked, it's at least better to· assume
so until told otherwise. Underneath
this casual cruelty-the convention
set by Cain, Hammet, et al.- move
the tides of human destiny and
decision, as crude as the surface
is intricate and ambiguous.
The Marlowe epics screen bet–
ter than they read, and I suspect
it's because Chandler strains too
much in the books to be arty, al–
though he is often brilliantly suc–
cessful in patches. His conventions
admirably suit the movies where
the camera, if it's alert, establishes
the proper sense of desolation-that
miasmic, Dantesque background of
California roadways, police sta–
tions, office buildings, and fake in-
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