In the film version of The Big Sleep, Howard Hawks invents scenes and characters that do not appear in Raymond Chandler's novel. No rare bookstore trist, no rough and ready female cabdriver, no winking cigarette girl grace the pages of his book; Marlowe and Vivian never talk of horses; and Carmen's always naked. But not in the film. In the film, she wears clothes, Marlowe is a jockey, Vivian is a horse, and all these characters appear. Faulkner, Brackett, and Furthman write these elements into the screenplay. But they do not develop ideas the text does not already suggest. The ideas are there--just evolved into new species that echo the original animal. Hawks had to do it, for the Production Code forbid directors to present any material that was overtly sexual, violent, vulgar or otherwise, profane. Therefore, since the Hays Office regulated what Hawks could present on film, his writers embedded the censored material in new forms. Todd McCarthy explains that, "the writers . . . and director . . . extract[ed] the maximum character and suggestiveness from every situation" (387). In other words, they invented and modified scenes and created characters while Hawks manipulated the mise-en-scene to suggest the forbidden ideas in Chandler's novel.
Three tenets of the Production Code impact the film directly. The Hays Office states as follows:
1. Sadism, homosexuality, incest, etc., should not even be hinted at in motion pictures.
2. The treatment of low, disgusting, unpleasant, though not necessarily evil, subjects should be subject always to the dictate of good taste and a regard for the sensibilities of the audience.
3. Complete nudity is never permitted. This includes nudity in f...
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...tes, but he does not present everything. Nor can he, for the Production Code restricts what he can represent on film in 1946. For this reason, Hawks eliminated some ideas--i.e. Geiger's homosexuality, Vivian's violent aggression--entirely. But he kept the one element he felt he could not omit. In the novel, Carmen's nude figure possesses an incalculable amount of energy. Hawks wanted that energy to carry the film. Therefore, he employed writers who would help him inject the power of her image into the film in ways the Hays Office would accept.
Works Cited
Chandler, Raymond. The Big Sleep. New York: Vintage Books, 1939.
McCarthy, Todd. Howard Hawks: The Grey Fox of Hollywood. New York: Grove Press, 1997.
Moley, Raymond. The Hays Office. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1945.
The Big Sleep. Dir. Howard Hawks. Universal, 1946.
... dook you/ gold cup and wine/ pass it ‘round circles” (29-33), the sardonic attitude is illustrated once more. The ironic tone is not only addressed through the use of Christianity, but the speaker also discusses how it ironic it is that it becomes acceptable for “whitemen” (14) to build sweat lodges. The speaker uses satire to convey the disgusted feelings of how her culture has been altered and combined with a loss of meaning.
morals are acquired, and conformity to a standard of right is attained. In the novel The
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This quote describes how Louise Halfe uses all four common elements of native literature in her writings. I have chosen to discuss two of the elements she frequently uses, Spirituality and Orality in relation to three of her poems: My Ledders, She Told Me and The Heat of my Grandmothers.
The film may have edited out one of the drastic details that made the novel’s success, explaining the film’s failure.
And that is precisely why The Big Sleep is a novel that has a hard time coming off as a pleasant reading experience. If the reader has to sift through all the repetition of Marlowe's observations, then it subtracts from the novels overall themes, which I believe are the most captivating parts. Perhaps if it were a short story or if Chandler displayed mercy on our souls by using similes lightly, then the novel would produce a stronger effect.
Often, we hear commentary about films that reading the book before watching the movie ruins the experience or that movies are never as good as the book on which it is based. The difference between forms is not as much about already knowing how the story ends as it is about the dumbing down of the work for a broader audience. However, Chandler wrote The Big Sleep as a piece of pulp fiction that was read by a large populace.
Connie Fife is a Saskatchewan, Cree poet who writes using her unique perspective, telling of her personal experiences and upbringing. This perspective is revealed to her audience through the poems “This is not a Metaphor”, “I Have Become so Many Mountains”, and “She Who Remembers” all of which present a direct relationship to her traditional background and culture (Rosen-Garten, Goldrick-Jones 1010). To show the relationship of her experiences through her poetry, Fife uses the form of dramatic monologue, as well as modern language and literal writing to display themes about racism presenting her traditional viewpoint to her audience.
At this point, the readers create their own movie in a way. They will determine important aspects of how the character speaks, looks like, and reacts. Whereas, in the movie, the reader has no choice but to follow the plot laid out in front of them. No longer can they picture the characters in their own way or come up with their different portrayals. The fate of the story, while still unpredictable, was highly influenced by the way the characters looked, spoke, and presented themselves on screen.
The Victorian era was remarkable for its rigid gender roles, which defined societal interactions. The prototypical Victorian woman existed in the domestic sphere, where she acted as a moral compass to guide her husband and children toward traditional morality. This vision was mostly limited to the middle and upper classes, but if her family’s circumstances were good, the Victorian woman might have spread her domestic, moralizing influence outside of her home to help the less fortunate. The Victorian man, on the other hand, occupied the public sphere, where he dealt with business and politics, and the more complex moral codes of the two. His home was a retreat, where he could take comfort in the morally upright space his wife made for him. However, as the period wore on, these strict gender roles proved to be too oppressive, and a “New Woman” emerged. The New Woman, as portrayed by Vivie Warren in Mrs. Warren’s Profession, steps out of the domestic sphere, a move that requires agency, moral complexity, and separation from – sometimes even emulation of – men. Because this stance was so different from the typical Victorian woman, it posed challenges not just for the New Women themselves, but for all members of society they interacted with.
Talented writers can take another’s work and expand it further into new potential. By adding details or introspection, a director or writer of an adaptation can achieve in pushing the boundaries of the original piece. In the case of Where the Wild Things Are, a children’s picture book written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak, was expanded into a far more complex and emotionally developed work. The novel’s world flourishes into an intricate story through both the film adaptation and its novelization counterpart. Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers offer a darker, yet vivid variation of Sendak’s classic book by crafting a more dynamic version and cultivating the story with rich character depth and development. Through their choices in writing and direction,
The question that causes division among many regards disgust’s role in morality. Those whom have opinions on the matter are making a prescriptive claim rather than a descriptive one. The question is not about what role disgust actually has in morality, rather, it is about what role disgust ought to have in morality. In addition to arguing why or why not disgust reactions are reliable in the moral spectrum, each side also appeals to a particular view of the nature of disgust itself.
Many of the first film elements that can be found in this movie work as an introduction to the two main characters of the story. These elements are meant to force the spectator- even one who had never heard speak of, or seen the two Hollywood stars shown on screen- to focus their attention on them.
Harrison, Anthongy H. Christina Rossetti in Context. University of NC Press, Chapel Hill and London: 1988.
In this essay Hume creates the true judges who are required to have: delicacy of taste, practice in a specific art of taste, be free from prejudice in their determinations, and good sense to guide their judgments. In Hume’s view the judges allow for reasonable critiques of objects. Hume also pointed out that taste is not merely an opinion but has some physical quality which can be proved. So taste is not a sentiment but a determination. What was inconsistent in the triad of commonly held belief was that all taste is equal and so Hume replaced the faulty assumption with the true judges who can guide society’s sentiments.