Not too many posts ago I wrote one about the changes that a story goes through on its way from printed page to silver screen. That got something stirring in me and I set out to read or reread as many of the books that have been the inspiration to some of my favorite movies. Along the way I noticed something curious. Many modern movies hold themselves much closer to the original stories than movies from the golden age, and while I think that’s a good thing for the high school football star who has little time for such nonsense as reading, the older movies are typical of a higher quality, story telling wise and even production wise. (Yes, I know, but that’s my opinion. It’s also my blog. Get over it.)
We likely have Will H. Hays to thank for the creative license taken by screen writers in the 1940s and 50s. Although the so-called Hays Code “governed” film propriety until 1968 when the now familiar 4 tiered Motion Picture Association of America rating system was adopted, it was during the golden age of moviemaking (1936-1962) that the classic movies differed much from their classic written beginnings – but often in a good way.
Reading the book versions of some film classics revealed three major changes. Most movies were targeted to run from 105 to 115 minutes. Provocative talk was okay, action was not. The bad guy not only never wins, he always gets more than his due. Although I the past two weeks I’ve read The Thin Man, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, and To Have and Have Not, I’m going to use Farewell, My Lovely, adapted to “Murder, My Sweet” as the film/book comparison. I’m case you want to read, watch, or do both with this story and have not yet done either, I will not reveal any plot information in this discussion.
Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely, released in 1944 as “Murder, My Sweet”* has enough character exposés and plot twists to fill 3 hours of screen time. Even “Gone With the Wind” couldn’t keep audience members who were honest entertained for 180 minutes. To keep it to a reasonable length, some sub-plots were completely eliminated and characters combined to make transactions flow through the deleted scenes less awkwardly. Of thirteen main characters from the novel, eight made the transition to the screen version and three of them were significantly altered.
Before we discuss plot changes it is worth noting the Chandler was not a stickler for plot details. Rather than relying on formula and a certainty that everything wraps up neatly at the end, he said he was more interested in the message conveyed by his stories. During the adaptation of another of his novels, The Big Sleep, screen writer William Faulkner, a pretty good novelist himself, was unable to reconcile one of the murders. It is said that after many hours of trying to successfully reveal, or at least hint at the culprit responsible for the character’s demise, the screenwriting team decided to call Chandler and ask who did it. His response? He didn’t know either!
In both book and movie, a missing necklace and a missing woman are central to the story. While the compactness of the plot and some subplot elements that were victims of time are obvious if you read the book before watching the movie, but if your first exposure to the tale is at the movies, there are no unresolved issues. How the woman and necklace become missing and found, and what happened in between were victim to the censors and may leave your wondering if the suspension of disbelief might be stretched just a little. Illegal drug use, questionable social couplings, racial and economic disparities, and police corruption were tempered or cast aside. The resulting screenplay, although missing many of the stops along the way to the conclusion, does not suffer for these details. In most cases, the viewers can replace with their imaginations what was handed to them in writing. This is not always a bad thing. Often your imagination can make a better story than the one first considered and when the inferences are made deftly, the conclusions can be fairly consistent. In a different movie/book tandem, The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett, although Nick and Nora sleep in separate beds in full pajamas with dressing robe and gown, there is no question that they are giddyingly in love with each other and present as a passionate couple.
The conclusion of “Murder, My Sweet,” although satisfying, takes a major departure from the novelist’s vision. Again, needing to satisfy the censors of the time, the character wrap up are quite different. Some “bad guys” in the novel are still walking around when the last page is turned. The Hays Code wanted audiences to see that crime not only doesn’t pay, but exacts a price. We never see the bullets fly (too violent) but we see the results. And who does the “cleaning up” and how they are manipulated so nobody gets an easy way out are somewhat vague. A final twist is the movie’s version of a happy ending, although working well for the movie, may not have been exactly as Chandler would have written it.
The is no question that if you watched “Murder, My Sweet” you know you are watching the story behind Farewell, My Lovely. It is faster paced, you might think you missed something when you went to re-butter the popcorn, and at the end you could be saying, “oh, yeah, I can see that,” but it’s clearly the same story. It’s just not the same.
Is it a bad thing that movie adaptations deviate from their source materials? Not always. When nothing but the title and a character name are all that are recognizable you get the sense the studio or production company know they have a dog of a story and the only way they stand a chance to make money is to buy a popular title. But a good story in the hands of talented screen writers, especially if they are source writers themselves, will show through regardless of constraints placed by the questionable morals police or to the keep it short so they don’t get bored police.
To quite somebody from some book or movie, “It’s all good!” (But it wouldn’t kill you to read the book.)
* Murder, My Sweet was not the first screen adaptation, nor the last, nor was the screen the only adapted medium of Farewell, My Lovely. Although the latest adaptation was made in 1975, it still was subject to significant changes for time and cultural references.
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Truth be told my most enjoyable reading comes from modern fiction. Not “literature.” Mystery, murder, intrigue, spying. My favorites authors are people like Sue Grafton, Lawrence Block, Lawrence Sanders, and Jonathan Kellerman who write books that never ended like you first (and sometimes second and third) thought they would. Could I find my favorite book amount those? Or do I go back a generation and consider a book famous for not ending as even the author thought, The Big Sleep? True. While working on the screenplay for the movie version, William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett couldn’t figure who murdered a particular character. They phoned Raymond Chandler, who said the answer was right there in his book. Later he returned their call to say he couldn’t figure out who killed that character either. Now there’s a whodunit!
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