The Falcon Takes Over

The Case Of The
Plundered Chandler

The Falcon Takes Over
USA 1942
Directed by Irving Reis
RKO/Warner Archive DVD Region 1

Well, this is the first of a kind of sea change for The Falcon movies (yeah... but just wait until we get to the next one). The second movie, A Date With The Falcon (reviewed here), had already jettisoned the stories being based on the original short fiction while just retaining the character (pretty much like the majority of the Bond movies but at least Hollywood had a decent excuse in this instance). This one also gets rid of The Falcon's fiancé. The last one wrapped up with The Falcon (played by George Sanders) on a plane with his side kick Goldy (played by Allen Jenkins) and his girlfriend (played by Wendy Barrie) on a plane and set to land at another town and get married. Well, for some reason, this one picks up back in New York and it’s said that The Falcon’s fiancé is... out of town. Which makes no sense in terms of how the last one ended but, well, I don’t think she’s coming back to be honest because Barrie, nor the character, seem to have returned for the next one (and given how events transpire in the next one, if memory serves, then that was her last chance to return in the same capacity... but we’ll get to that when we come to it).

So anyhow, this leaves The Falcon and Goldy free to make the life of James Gleason as Inspector Mike O'Hara a misery again, as Gay Lawrence (alias The Falcon) gets accidentally embroiled in another case. And not just anybody’s case, as it happens... Phillip Marlowe’s case, in fact. Not that Marlowe is in this movie... The Falcon is standing in for him. In fact, this film is the first movie version (pre-dating Murder My Sweet by two years) of Raymond Chandler’s famous Marlowe tale Farewell My Lovely. It’s nowhere near as good as the Dick Powell version, of course... however, this is a vehicle for the title character so a lot of the plot of that one is jettisoned too.

In this version we have Ward Bond playing the Moose Malloy character who gets so many people in trouble on the trail of his ‘sweetheart’, the evil Velma. We also have a young, ‘would be’ reporter standing in as The Falcon’s main female interest in this one, played by Lynn Bari. She’s pretty good in this and basically does all the kind of things Wendy Barrie was doing in the previous two movies to an extent but, at least in this one, not everybody ends up in jail (only Goldy for a short while).

There’s not an awful lot to say about this movie, to be fair. The actors are all doing fine in their formulaic roles and the film breezes along at just over an hour. Sanders does a nice turn when he’s pretending to be drunk to stop himself being killed by Moose at one point. Of further note is Helen Gilbert in the role of Diana Kenyon. It’s easy to figure out just who she really is in this whole ‘mystery’ but, I have to say, she has a real sexual ‘femme fatale’ presence in this and I’m really surprised she only had 18 films to her credit... I think she shows real star quality here.

The film is not nearly as action packed as the last movie and, although there are a lot of moments of broad humour, it's not nearly as fast paced either which, considering this story’s source, is not completely unsurprising. People aren’t dying every five minutes in this one because the story is more convoluted than that. Well, it’s not because the writers aren't trying hard to simplify it to the extent that, well, it doesn’t really play out in as interesting way as the proper, future adaptations of the book, for sure.

And that’s me done again already with this one. A very good friend of mine, whenever I write a review which I think is way too short, always tells me that ‘short’ is good. Well, I don’t necessarily agree with that but I think in the case of some of my 13 reviews of The Falcon series (more coming soon), short will have to do. The movies themselves are extremely short and, well, this one and probably many more, don’t have much of interest to note. So apologies if you feel I’ve given The Falcon Takes Over short shrift but... I don’t have much of anything else to say about it. It’s a light, breezy and reasonably entertaining movie with another solid performance by George Sanders in the title role. A role which he would relinquish at some point into the running time of the next movie but, like I said before, I’ll get to that one soon.