Hardboiled Literature. John Huston's The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Ridley's Scott's Blade Runner (1982) - Essay Example

? Number] Hardboiled Literature The Maltese Falcon is a film of 1941 which was produced by Warner Bros. It was directed by John Huston and it was based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel that had the same title. Although the film was the director’s debut, it was much loved and appreciated; in fact it also got nominated for the Academy Awards. It was the first major film noir since it was an adventurous and detective based film. The film shows the dealings of the detective with the people related to his three adventures and all of them were associated with the mission to obtain the falcon statuette which was precious and encrusted with gold. Film has been loved by all by the way it has been directed and cinematographed as the first main film noir. The style and the visual effects of the film have given it the capability of depicting a thriller and adventurous story of a novel in a beautiful manner that seems to be smooth and impactful. Blade Runner is a film of 1982 which was based on science and action. The film is directed by Ridley Scott and it is also based on a novel namely Do Anroids Dream of Electric Sheep? And this was written by Phillip K. Dick. The film is based on a complicated theme of the future in 2019. In the film, the genetically engineered robots are manufactured by the mega manufacturers of the world. They are not differentiable from the humans and are used for dangerous or leisure work. According to many of the reviews, the film was criticized for its complicated theme but at the same time praised and accepted for its screenplay and direction. The film also used the similar background settings as in The Maltese Falcon. It was the neo-noir film and one of the greatest contributions to that genre. It also showed much of the cultural and traditional significance which marked one of the finest histories in the film industry. Both the films have been based on film noirs and this has made the depiction of the respective novels very prominent and professional. The visual effects have been immensely used and the directors have been successful in creating a suspense film. Even though the themes have been totally different, the films have a background genre in common and that made it necessary to have a set of visual screening effects that would enlighten the mode of the film. Thus, it was important to use the camera effects to show the suspense, graphics and the true picture. This is how the directors were successful in adopting the novel as they used the proper effects and visual style that was needed and expected. The style is based upon sexual motivations and it is based upon the adaptations from the attitudes of criminal fiction and classical prototypical films. Both the films show the drama and adventure so the film noir played an important part in depicting the directors’ personal thoughts and the extractions from the original novel. Hardboiled literature is a term which is usually used for a film genre which shows the setting of a crime fiction scene or a detective scene. It has been derived from the romantic tradition and emphasized on such emotions like horror, apprehension and terror. It also discusses the tradition of the detective attitudes and cynical attitudes in relation to these emotions. Mostly, the hardboiled fiction talks about the detective and his feelings in first person writing. It talks about and focuses upon the activities of the detective and his ideas to unfold his adventures and mysteries. His attitude is conveyed to the reader or viewer through the setting of scenes and evaluation of his cynical attitude. The typical setting of this genre is to make the detective the hero by getting him to witness the violence of the organized crime and dealing with the corrupt legal system (Smith 37). It is basically a tough and hard unsentimental style of literature through films and novels. It has depicted the American crime in such a way that gave a boost to the film industry and to the viewer’s apprehension. It in fact brought a new direction for the naturalism for the field of detective attitudes. The settings that it used to depict these attitudes were specifically through sex, violence, urban backgrounds and slang language. This meant that it did not seem easy for many of the directors to adopt this form of genre but the invention of this genre was made by Dashiell Hammett (Smith 37). After him, it became very famous and flourished throughout the decade. Hardboiled fiction was also termed as attitude. It was said to be the attitude of saying what’s the truth and to let the truth reach out to the people at large; the viewers. Sometimes it was referred not as merely the crime fiction or the attitude showing violence, it was just the attitude of truth to show the viewer that what it actually is. Thus, it can also be violence. Dashiell Hammett was the person who invented the genre of hardboiled literature. He was a former detective and had contributed towards the pulp magazines. His first hardboiled story was published in the Black Mask magazine in 1929, “Fly Paper”. He combined all his life experiences and joined them with the influence of great writers such as Ernest Hemingway and John Dos (Seed 122). Hammett had managed to create a realistic impact to define the American detective fiction which was entirely different from the English detective and mystery stories. The English stories had still depended upon the setting of a country house and it being populated by cooks and relatives. This pattern had been long used by the American writers since generations. The Maltese Falcon is Hammett’s masterpiece and best work of all time. Other detective novels were Red Harvest and The Thin Man which was his most famous one. Hammett had left his talents to be incorporated in many of the hardboiled literary works such as James M. Cain in his early books The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Raymond Chandler was also a successor of Hammett and his novels were The Big Sleep, Farewell, The Little Sister and My Lovely. These were based on racketeering and corruption in the region of Southern California. Hammett had moulded his life into his stories and filled his work with the core attitude and truth of detective fiction (Seed 122). The hardboiled tradition has become much more strong and bold than it was 70 years ago. Some of the important writers of the hardboiled literature were George Harmon Coxe who wrote Murder with Pictures and Eye Witness, W. R. Burnett who was the author of Little Ceaser and The Asphalt Jungle. Hardboiled literature has become more intense and serious now than what Hammett had invented. This can be seen in the first individual style of writing of Hammett, The Maltese Falcon in which he got the chance to deliver some of the best characters of all time. Thus, through depicting and shaping his own life into the detective fiction shows the hardboiled attitude in his nature and writing. The detective in the hardboiled literature most commonly has to look out justice and thus he has to stay lonely at times. This is why he is presented as being lonely and isolated from the temptations of the world around him. He had to stay in the code of behaviour and ethics which is the code for his enemies. In this hardboiled literary work as well, Sam Spade is trapped in this code and he is trying to find and punish the murdered of his partner Miles Archer, though he admits he did not admire him. Parker’s Spenser is seduced by attractive women yet he resists the allurement to stay honest to Susan Silverman. Pat Gallegher is also forced into his life but he tries his best to balance it off through the performance of his dangerous attempts (Serafin and Bendixen 171). Hemmett has however, redefined many of the attributes of the hard boiled genre in his most famous work. Spade’s character is one that is bitter and who allows the policemen to think that he is with the criminals when he is, in real, working alone in order to get hold of the crooks. The crooks are manipulative and merely selfish since they do not have the concern for anyone else except themselves. Hammett also never showed clarity in the notion of Spade’s morality unlike other hardboiled literature detective fictions. Spade was having an affair with Archer’s wife at the time of his death. And then in the end he is willing to do the right thing by catching Archer’s killer but the reasons for which he is doing so are unclear and ambiguous. He has expressed some professional ethics and also his own self interest in this. Thus, the sense of risk, duty and the reward of Spade is what Hammett had ended his work with and that part contains the least traces of morality. Hammett’s work has been commendable since his writing style was unusual. He did not tell the reader the inner thoughts of the characters but rather told all about the characters’ individual behaviour and actions. This is what made him the best hardboiled literature writer of his time (Seed 122). Earnest Hemingway is one of the best American classics literary writers of his time. His writing style was usually contemporary and gripping. One of the characteristics was the intensity in his writing which gave him the strong and bold narratives that made him famous. Hemingway was mostly common because of his themes which were said to be love, war or loss. These were popular themes regularly occurring in the American literature but Hemingway’s contribution made these themes even more intense and strong. He also wrote about the dark side of the women and the light side and was mainly inspired by the hardboiled literature. Reading Ernest Hemingway meant a treat for many of the readers who clearly got into the story and learnt not only about the truth of the characters but also about their feelings and mind disturbances. This is what gave him the attribute of writing in an attitude that was about the truth rather than violence and brutal language. By reading Ernest Hemingway, we can understand hardboiled literature more closely as he is regarded as one of the most famous writers of this type. Film noir is a term given to the stylish crime fiction dramas that mainly depict cynical attitudes. The term is mostly used in Hollywood for the classical films in the 1940s to 1950s known as the classical film noir period. The film noir can be associated with many styles but mostly it comprises of the black and white style which has come from the German Expressionist cinematography. It is closely related to the Hardboiled School of detective and crime fiction as much of the stories and attitudes are derived from there. Literally this term means “black film” and thus is visualized as black and white (Conard 3). Film noir was first applied in 1946 to these films by the French critics specifically Nino Frank. At that time none of the American literary professionals recognized this term. The critics then defined the term properly and it became widely adopted in the 1970’s. Until then, the film noirs were known as melodramas. The debate for letting the film noir is a separate genre of films is an ongoing debate between the scholars. Film noir is presented in many of the ways and it can contain many plot settings. As seen in the history of film noir settings, some examples of common plots are an aging boxer, a plainclothes policeman, a citizen lured to break the law and simply a victim. The names of some films are The Big Sleep, The Big Heat, The Set-Up and Night and the City. Initially the film noir was only regarded to the American productions, but now noir films are made throughout the world. After the 1960s it was seen that the film noir is self-referent and have attributed of the classical period. Latter, the work became neo-noir as film noir had long inspired the parody and traditional depiction of scenes and plots (Conard 3). Pulp Fiction attributes towards the low quality of life of the gangsters and boxers and that is why it can relate to the film noir. It contains some of the foundational elements of the film noir genre but it cannot be said to be completely the example of film noir and this is because of the liberties that it has. It however, does revolve around the edges of the film noir traditions. The liberties in pulp fiction are about the visual and narrative attributes that are often shot in colour settings and it does not fulfil the most important framework from the film noir which is the femme fatale without which film noir cannot be film noir at all. Thus, the most prominent difference in pulp fiction and film noir is the colour. Where film noir refers to a dark film using the shadows and low lighting immensely, pulp fiction has contributed towards the gap between the traditional and modernized. Film noir was usually seen to be showing uncertainty which brought up the darker impulse of a human mind. It also depicts elements of doubt and that is present in a typical film noir because of its close relation to detectives and criminals. Since the pulp fiction relies on gangsters and mobsters, and introduces the shadows of crooks that can show goodness and the law officers show corruption, the film noir differs. However, the end to both the genres is the same: destruction in a violent manner (Conard 3). Pulp fiction is not shot in a chronological order and it takes a more non-linear approach. Pulp fiction has been originated from the film noir but the amendments had made it vague and that still exists in the genre. In pulp fiction, the characters are redeemed, whereas in film noir this is very rare and the optimistic feeling is also rare. At times, the pulp fiction is referred to as the synonym of hardboiled fiction or crime fiction. It is said that the original hardboiled fiction has been advanced and emulated by various writers. The Maltese Falcon has marked the history of the film noir as it was the first major film noir and it was also regarded by many critics as the best film noir. The screenplay of the film was a major attempt to bring the hardboiled literature novel written by Hammett to screen and convey the thriller to the viewers. But it possibly did not follow the complete story of the novel and was unable to bring the true spirit of Spade to screen. In relation to the film noir, statements were made saying that the directors has tried his best to carry the hardboiled nature of the novel and has tried to put in as much of the dialogues as possible. What is best about the film is the mystery and the clearance of the evil world which is an atmosphere created in the film noir. The character of Spade in the novel written by Hammett had a cynical attitude but in the film, he was rather ready to carry out his affair with the wife of Archer in the end. About the final scenes in the film, it has been concluded that they rather gave more romantic gestures of Spade and showed the psychological disturbed mind of the detective. This is what marked the significant development in the film noir which was unlike the novel where he survived. Sin City was directed by Robert Rodriguez and it was based upon the graphic novels of Frank Miller. It is a neo-noir which was a style adopted from the elements of film noir and was thus a modern form of motion pictures. It had updated styles, content, themes and visual features. These characteristics were not present in the film noir of the early 1940s and 1950s. It is based on three neo-noir works by Miller; The Hard Goodbye, The Big Fat Kill and That Yellow Bastard. The themes depended upon the killing, violence, prostitutes and an aging police officer who is protecting women. Sin City was marked as the recognition to the neo-noir film genre and it gained much success in doing that. The film showed its unique colour and although rendered black and white, it did add colours in selected objects. The film was subjected for its visual shaping and its screenplay. Although the stories were about crime fiction and thriller, the director had added a new element in the visual setting and thus, it became one of the most recognized modern day neo-noir films. Work Cited Conard, Mark. The Philosophy of Film Noir. USA: University Press of Kentucky, 2007. Print. Seed, David. A Companion to Twentieth-Century United States Fiction. NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2010. Print. Serafin, Steven and Bendixen Alfred. The Continuum Encyclopaedia of American Literature. NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2005. Print. Smith, Erin. Hard-Boiled. USA: Temple University Press, 2000. Print. Read More