One thing about The Big Sleep (Chandler) and Red Harvest (Hammet) is that they - I guess maybe the whole noir thing in general - give a sort of insight into the arbitrary nature of censorship and how the things that offend us, or which someone deems ought to offend us - or perhaps it would be better to say that someone deems that we need to be protected from - changes over the years.
I think I'm right in saying that the Maltese Falcon which was also by Hammett, has been filmed (at least) twice. The first version (which I've never seen, has anyone here seen it in fact?
@DLaurent maybe?) was filmed before the Hayes Code was in place and presumably it contained some things which would have counted as too strong for the very famous version which came out a few years later starring Humphrey Bogart.
I know that in that the Bogey version the bits about one of the bad guys being gay are pretty much removed apart from when Bogey refers to him as a "gunsel" which apparently was an anti-gay slur obscure enough to get past the censors. Of course, removing the homophobia was not a progressive move - they weren't removing the insults to protect the insulted, rather they were removing all references to homosexuality altogether, deleting the very idea to protect the delicate sensibilities of audience that was presumably composed of a particularly innocent group of maiden aunts.
In the Big Sleep book there are a couple of quite horrible bits - on one occasion he describes something as "unpleasant and nasty like a fag party" and another bit where he talks about fighting a big gay bloke as follows
It's very strange to me cos it reads as though he literally believes that to be true. Or maybe it was just what he could get away with. A nice bit of literary punching down. And it's quite interesting how when I read a line like that I find it shocking - well, maybe that's not quite the right word, but the bits where you have the authorial voice expressing strong homophobic sentiments, and then on almost the next line they censor a simple profanity is as clear an example you could hope for of how views have completely switched round since then
One might also wonder why so many of the bad guys turn out to be gay; I suppose that you could make an argument that our gumshoes operate in a murky half-world of vice - protection rackets and pornography, gambling and blackmail are their daily bread - and it does make sense that people whose very lifestyles were deemed criminal would have found themselves being pushed into it. But why are they always the bad guys? Definitely seems to be a strong case of homophobia which I imagine would be pretty much par for the course for tough guys such as Hammett and Chandler... or did they protest just a little too much? Or is that just too neat and satisfactory an answer?
Speaking of tough guys, it's often said that Hammett's books gained extra authenticity from his time working for the Pinkerton Detective Agency (presumably the basis for The Continental Agency in Red Harvest) but I'm struggling to believe that Hammett ever marched into a town and mowed down about fifty men - ultimately putting the entirety of four or five criminal gangs into the big sleep.
But whatever, of course the books are larger than life, they are sensational crime fiction novels destined to be huge films - and perhaps when they mention authenticity they are talking about the language and the slang which they used. And really, it's the dialogue that makes the films for me - the way it's written and the way the actors delivered it. Obviously I have no way of judging how true to life it was - other than what it says in the introduction or wikipedia or whatever - but it sounds cool and that's really what I want to be honest.
I'm glad to read these books at last anyway. I have seen loads and loads of noir films over the years. I mean really I have seen a lot, but I've never read any of the books at all. Ah, wait a minute though, once I did find a book by Mickey Spillane kicking around on a shelf in the spare room in my parents' house when I was very little. Typically I picked it up and tried to read it but I just didn't have the toolkit to understand it (was probably five or six years old), I could sort of understand that there was something that might interest me later.
But anyway, what really struck me in reading these books is how similar they are to the films. Most films are quite different to a book, but these ones are closer than almost anything that I have read. You could say that is because the books are simplistic, or you could equally argue that they are slimmed down and taut with no unnecessary fat, it jus depends on your viewpoint really. There is very little in the way of introspection or thought or anything beyond "I did this, then I did that, and then I decided to do this" with a few wisecracks stirred in.
The only book I have read where the film and book are so similar in feel and approach is No Country For Old Men... which, I guess, you could call a neo-noir, and so that is perhaps not surprising.
Anyway, gonnna knock this long, rambling post on the head at that point. I said I was gonna talk about censorship and how it changed but really I just kinda splurged out everything in my mind. Oh well.