Re: RARA-AVIS: Hammett or Daly?


Juri Nummelin (jurnum@utu.fi)
Tue, 26 Oct 1999 12:51:24 +0300 (EET DST)


On Tue, 26 Oct 1999, Bob Toomey (and William Denton) wrote:

> > What led (Carroll John) Daly to start writing the way he did? I don't
> > know anything about his life or previous stories.
>
> I don't know much about him either. From what little I've read, he was,
> like a lot of writers, a nice quiet fellow with a violent imagination.

I've read that Daly owned cinema theaters. And that he really was a very quiet fellow. And that he was hugely popular and the publishers printed his work only because they meant money - if it hadn't been so, they wouldn't have touched them. Some of his early work is rather effective, but he doesn't have any eye for plotting. The stories are just confusing.

Someone mentioned Kurosawa's "Bad Sleep Well". I don't know such movie, what year was it made and what's the original title? Is it "Nora Inu" from 1949? It's a very good police film with slight noir touches, but maybe more neorealistic approach. As for "Yojimbo" and "For a Few Dollars More" (or is it "Fistful of Dollars"..?). The interviewer once said to Sergio Leone that he had copied the story of his film from
"Yojimbo" and Leone answered laughing: "Kurosawa copied it from Hammett!"

But we still don't know if Kurosawa knew Hammett. But in the early sixties he filmed Ed McBain's novel - in Finland the film is called
"Heaven and Hell", but just now I don't remember what McBain novel it was. Maybe Kurosawa did know American hard boiled literature.

Juri jurnum@utu.fi

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