United States

Tough guy ROBERT MITCHUM plays Raymond Chandler's famous private eye, Philip Marlowe, in the downtown Los Angeles of the 1940s. He accepts an assignment to locate Velma (CHARLOTTE RAMPLING), the former nightclub girlfriend of 'a guy built like a beer truck', Moose Malloy (JACK O'HALLORAN). Without a photograph, but with the indecisive help of veteran policeman Nulty (JOHN IRELAND), Marlowe meets the hard-drinking Mrs. Florian (SYLVIA MILES) amidst the brothels, dives and mansions of L.A. He is framed for murder, beaten up, shot at, doped by a lesbian madame and seduced by the voluptuous Mrs. Grayle, wife of an elderly judge. She lures Marlowe into a dangerous web of murder and intrigue in one of the screen's most original, and gutsy, crime classics.