Re: RARA-AVIS: re: various film posts and the Ice Harvest

From: Mark Sullivan ( DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net)
Date: 13 Nov 2001


Carrie asked:

"Was the Deep End based on a crime novel? Wasn't it something French? Anybody read it and have any insights in the changes that were made? I dug Memento but TDE didn't do a lot for me.   It was quite a lovely film and well acted but I found the story rather nonsensical and thought it ran out of steam well before the end (as we've been discussing that some books want to be shorter than the editors make them, I thought maybe this feature wanted to be a short; there wasn't enough to sustain a film IMO)."

Deep End was based on The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding. I haven't read it, but Raymond Chandler certainly thought highly of it. From one of his letters:

"For my money she's the top suspense writer of them all. She doesn't pour it on and make you feel irritated. Her characters are wonderful; and she has a sort of inner calm which I find very attractive. I recommend for your attention, if you have not read them, Net of Cobwebs, The Innocent Mrs. Duff, The Blank Wall."

I haven't found The Blank Wall, yet, but I did find The Innocent Mrs. Duff (haven't read it yet) as half of an Ace Double. I'm guessing she can't be accused of padding, it's only 147 pages; the other half, The Virgin Huntress is only 107.

"But I couldn't get through 20 pages of the Ice Harvest, much less the whole thing. Would finishing it have been worth my time?"

If you didn't like the first 20 pages, you won't like the rest of it, it's more of the same, driving from one bar to another while waiting to make a meet. And that's why I liked it, even if the ending was a touch too O'Henry ironic after the mostly naturalistic story.

Mark

--
# To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to
# majordomo@icomm.ca.  This will not work for the digest version.
# The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .



This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 13 Nov 2001 EST