Good hardboiled detective films (1 Viewer)

[Kabbasi]

Well, I was going to use "The Maltese Falcon" as a text for my assessment, but seeing as how the majority of the year is using that or "The Big Sleep", I wanted to be a little different and so I was wondering if any of you bright young minds had any suggestions of good hardboiled detective films from the 1940-50's era - if it has alot of film noir, even better. :wave: Thankyou in advance!

 

[kami]

While there are other Hardboiled films in that time period that you could use, they would in essence be identicial (or close to it) in the way you analysed them in your essay (same cultural values, same conventions etc.). If you want to stick with the early Hardboiled films then I'd suggest The Long Goodbye even though it is from the 70s - it is a movie of the Marlowe series with some of the same writing team as The Big Sleep but instead written as a criticism of the selfish holywood culture (which so constrained the movies previously). There is also The Glass Key from which Howard Hawks borrowed from considerably for The Big Sleep - however like most films from that time period you might have problems getting your hands on it.

In the end though if you really want to break away from your classmates then I'd mirror Lottox' suggestion - use a more modern Hardboiled and analyse how cultural values have altered the conventions. A good example is Devil In A Blue Dress, which has an african american lead - something you wouldn't have seen in the 40s/50s.

 

[-pari-]

also you might like to try moving away from just american/british crime fiction writing. that will also give you something different...

 

[Kabbasi]

also you might like to try moving away from just american/british crime fiction writing. that will also give you something different...

Pari, am i thinking that you're suggesting i use films with subtitles?

When I think about it, that is a good idea. It was just that the assessment asked us to talk about the changing conventions of classical crime fiction (whether or not they had changed) and i wanted to use the distinct hard boiled film noir crime fiction mean streets trenchcoat wearing man type of films because the sub teacher gave us like this whole smorgasboard of paper about the differences. I would have talked to my teacher about this but she broke her legs last holidays and she's off for a term...

We're given the choice of using 2-3 texts, so, if i were to use on text to devote to classical fiction, and you're telling me not to focus on the british american stuff, what would you suggest? I was just thinking of doing a hard boiled film and then something like Patricia Cornwell's "Postmortem". I really want to make sure this speech works.

 

[Tanster]

Hello Kathy,

We've got a similar assignment due, but our teacher is quite..umm..'picky'(not sure if thats the right word) and so he wouldnt let more than one person in the class do the same topic for the speech. So unfortunately i got stuck with women detectives in modern crime fiction. ANYWAYS, if your looking for a film noir from the 1940s, try 'double indemnity', i was about to do it, until someone else picked that topic. Havent seen it myself, but its supposed to be good according to some article i was reading on crime fiction.

Even so, i agree with LottoX too, try finding texts from different time periods, gives you a hell of a lot more to talk about. Tis what im doing.

I wonder if this reply is late...oh well, if not, good luck