-------Original Message------- From: JIM DOHERTY <
jimdohertyjr@yahoo.com> Sent: 08/21/03 10:12 AM To:
rara-avis@icomm.ca Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: Movie
Adaptations & "THE LONG GOODBYE (1973)
> [The '40s "Big Sleep" movie] was true to the spirit
of the book, if not the absolute letter.
Like "To Have and Have Not," another film made by the same
team -- Howard Hawks (director), Faulkner & Furthman
& Brackett (screenwriters) -- "The Big Sleep" is much
more comic in nature than the novel on which it's
based.
To borrow somebody else's description, the novel ends with
"Marlowe brood[ing] on death -- 'the big sleep' -- and Mona,
who helped him to avoid it."
And how does the film end? With the promise of a clinch
between Bogart and Bacall, Bacall smirking knowingly after
her snappy comeback, the rising 'cello phrase of Max
Steiner's marvelous score as it blends with the sound of a
police siren, and a shot of two cigarettes in the same
ashtray.
> Film and prose are different mediums. Sometimes
changes are necessary to telscope action, to make the piece
more visual, etc.
It's a matter of complex translation to say who pulled the
trigger?
Chris
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