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RARA-AVIS: Hardboiled and Noir again
On Thu, 30 Jan 1997, Ann P. Melvin wrote:
: What is an accepted hardboiled novel becomes in its cinematic
: transmogrification a noir film. It is as if the transformation of a
: narrative description of a character into a visual portayal of an
: performer's interpretation of that description subtly changes its
: emphasis from the physical to the psychological.
Interesting. In some ways, you'd think it would be the other way
around, since you can conjure up images of the characters in a novel
but when you see them in a movie there's no getting around the
actors. What happens in radio adaptations?
I wonder, how were hardboiled and "noir" novels classified when they
came out? Hardboiled was hardboiled, as far as I know. What we would
call noirish now, what did they call it then? Hardboiled, pulp,
something you wouldn't want Junior to read? Maybe knowing how they
were seen in the past would help distinguish what they are today.
: How much, of course, of those characterizations are Bogart playing
: Bogart or talent bringing out nuances of personality I leave for
: others to remark upon.
And how much do the movie versions affect our reading? I can never
think of Gutman, Cairo or Wilmer without thinking of Greenstreet,
Lorre and Cook - and vice versa. Bogart as Marlowe and Spade I don't
mix up so much; I imagine Marlowe as being more like Powers Boothe,
who did a really good job in a short series of TV adaptations.
However, the books and the adaptations usually get all jumbled up in
my head. I read _Shoot the Piano Player_ (a.k.a. _Down There_) after
seeing the movie, and kept imagining people talking in sub-titles.
Bill
--
William Denton : buff@vex.net <-- Please note new address.
Toronto, Canada <-- I'm not at io.org any more.
http://www.vex.net/~buff/ Caveat lector.
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