Gender Differences In The Film 'The Maltese Falcon'

THE MALTESE FALCON
Take note that Prospero says "made on," not "made of," despite Humphrey Bogart's famous last line in the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon: "The stuff that dreams are made of." (Bogart suggested the line to director John Huston, but neither seems to have brushed up his Shakespeare.) Film buffs may think "made of" is the authentic phrase, but they're only dreaming.

(We are such stuff / As dreams are made on; and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep. [The Tempest Act 4, scene 1, 148–158]

: I think that there are some pretty significant differences between the
: novel and the 1941 film, presumably largely caused by adherence to the
: Hays Code. I am most disturbed by Spade's strip-search of Brigid
: O'Shaunessy.
Cleaning up the language and
scenes like that seem to make up most of the changes. One other different is Gutman's daughter, Rhea, who was dropped completely for the movie. In the book, just after Captain Jacobi stumbles into Spade's office, he gets a phone call, goes to Gutman's hotel, sees the daughter (who's been drugged and was sticking herself with pins to stay awake), and gets an address from her. He goes there, finds an empty house, searches it, and comes back knowing it was all misdirection. In the movie, Spade gets the phone call and is given an address, and when he goes there he finds it's an empty lot. He turns around and comes back. It's simpler, more efficient, and I think it works better. Gutman's daughter doesn't serve any purpose anywhere.
One other difference is a matter of scene construction. At Spade's first meeting with Gutman, he smashes his glass and threatens Gutman, saying he's got to decide fast if he's in or out. In the book, the chapter ends with this. By God, you think, Spade's one tough hombre. The next chapter opens with Spade getting in the elevator, sweating, his hands shaking, wired up after putting on a show. In the movie, Spade walks out in the corridor, sees how badly his hands are shaking, laughs, goes to the elevator, and the scene ends. The difference casts the threat, and Spade's moxie, in a bit of a different light.

The first character that we read or see is Sam Spade. In the book he is written as being tall and lanky with blond hair, and a recurring v-motif that makes him out to be what Hammett describes as a "blond Satan." With these descriptions, we can easily make out a powerful image of what Sam Spade must look like in our heads. When we have an image of what something is going to be like and it turns out to not at all be what we expected, we are often let down, disappointed.This is due to the casting of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade. His hair is brown, and his, round, soft face is the farthest a face can come from having a satanic v-motif. Although Humphrey Bogart's acting was very good, it was intruded by my perception of what Sam Spade was supposed to look like.

The precocious director Huston was very faithful to Dashiell Hammett's 1929 novel The Maltese Falcon, that had originally appeared as a five-part serialized story in a pulp fiction, detective story magazine publication named Black Mask. However, for an early preview audience, the film took a different, short-lived title, The Gent From Frisco. There were two major differences between the book and film: (1) Gutman was killed by Wilmer, and (2) the last quotable line of dialogue, with a Shakespearean reference, was thought up by Bogart on the set.

The third, and perhaps best known, version is The Maltese Falcon (1941), directed by John Huston, and starring Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade, Jerome Cowan as Miles Archer, Lee Patrick as Effie Perine (the correct spelling from the book), Gladys George as Archer’s wife Iva, Mary Astor as Brigid O'Shaughnessy (the femme fatale, and the name used in the book), Peter Lorre as Joel Cairo (who is not titled Dr. in the book either), Sydney Greenstreet as Kasper Gutman (spelled with a C in the book), Elisha Cook Jr. as Wilmer Cook (also referred to as "the boy" throughout the book), and the police detective (Ward Bond) & Lieutenant (Barton MacLane). This is also unquestionably the best of the three films, proving that a remake can be better than the original.

Most of the differences are pretty subtle and probably were changed for the sake of pacing. For example, in the movie Sam finds out about La Paloma after he wakes up in Gutman’s hotel room and starts looking around the room. It’s a much more drawn out process in the book. In the book, Sam finds out Miss O’Shaugnessy didn’t go to Effie’s apartment like she was supposed to. Instead, she had the cab stop to get a newspaper, then she asked to be brought to the ferry building. So Sam gets a copy of the paper in question to look for clues, but doesn’t figure it out until he starts snooping around Cairo’s room and notices that the newspaper section with ship arrivals was of particular interest to him. Although there’s nothing wrong with the way that part plays out in the book, if it were filmed that way, it would have slowed the movie down. Another difference is that the character of Gutman’s daughter is completely absent from the Bogart movie (as well as from the Ricardo Cortez version, for that matter), but she wasn’t exactly a vital character in the book.

A lot of the other changes were definitely made because of the production codes. What’s interesting about that content is that neither the 1931 or the 1941 version gets it exactly right. The 1931 version tends to be a bit more scandalous than the book was, but it does include things that were in the book that couldn’t be included in the 1941 version. There’s no way the 1941 version could have gotten away with the scene where Spade strip searches O’Shaugnessy after noticing that $1,000 of the $10,000 Gutman promised him was missing, but it was in the 1931 version. The 1941 version also really had to downplay the fact that Cairo and Wilmer were both supposed to be gay, the 1931 version made that much clearer. In the book, when O’Shaugnessy finds out that Sam has been talking to Cairo and that he’s prepared to offer more money than she can, she offers to sleep with him and proceeds to spend the night at Sam’s apartment. When it comes to that part in the 1941 version, O’Shaugessy can’t offer herself to Spade or spend the night, so Sam just kisses her instead. As for Spade’s affair with Iva Archer, the 1941 version actually depicts what went on more accurately than the 1931 version. The 1931 version made that affair more salacious than the book described. First of all, the book made Iva Archer out to be a little past her prime, which Thelma Todd most certainly was not. There also weren’t any scenes involving Iva showing up at Sam’s apartment and finding O’Shaugnessy wearing her kimono nor were there any of Miles listening on the extension while Sam and Iva set up a tryst.

Let me explain my theory. OK, the basic plot of The Maltese Falcon has detective Sam Spade agreeing to help some shady characters get their hands on a valuable statuette, in exchange for a cut of the profits. The criminals are:
Gutman, a jovial fat man, ringleader of the gang
Joel Cairo, an effeminate homosexual Greek man
Brigid O'Shaughnessy, beautiful femme fatale
Wilmer Cook, surly boy (18-20 years old?), handy with a gun
At one point, these characters send Spade on a wild-goose-chase: they tell him that Brigid is in Gutman's hotel room, but when Spade gets there, all he finds is Gutman's daughter Rhea, who has been drugged with knock-out drops, and has been poking herself in the stomach with a pin to keep herself awake so she can tell Spade where the others have gone. This is a really bizarre scene: Rhea never appears elsewhere in the novel, so it's hard to know what to think of her. Why is she living with her criminal father? What does she do while he chases treasure around the world? Why does Gutman never mention her? Even more bizarre, after Spade puts Rhea to bed, he phones a hospital and lets them know that there's a drugged girl in Gutman's suite. Later, he learns that when the doctors arrived, "there was nobody there." Weird!

Indeed, the character of Rhea raises so many problematic questions that the movie version tinkered with the plot and eliminated her entirely.

When Spade catches up with the criminals, he tells Gutman "That daughter of yours has a nice belly...too nice to be scratched up with pins." Gutman says nothing. But Wilmer steps forward and raises his gun: "Everyone in the room looked at him. In the dissimilar eyes with which Brigid O'Shaughnessy and Joel Cairo looked at him there was, oddly, something identically reproving. The boy blushed, drew back his advanced foot, straightened his legs, lowered the pistol and stood as he had stood before, looking under lashes that hid his eyes at Spade's chest. The blush was pale enough, and lasted for only an instant, but it was startling on his face that habitually was so cold and composed."

The physical appearance of the two characters is similar. Wilmer is "an undersized youth," Rhea is "a small girl." There are many references to Wilmer's cold white complexion, and Rhea has a "face that was white and dim." Wilmer has hazel eyes, Rhea has golden-brown eyes. Also, though Wilmer talks tough and packs heat, his "long curling eyelashes" are feminine. And he is always described as having a "composed," "low," "flat" voice--the voice that a girl would need to adopt if she was disguising herself as a man. (This is why I assume it's Rhea in disguise as Wilmer and not the other way around. It's easier for a girl to look like a young man in coat and cap, than for a boy to look convincingly like a beautiful young woman in satin pajamas.)

Now, the traditional interpretation of the character of Wilmer is that he is gay and possibly involved with Gutman.
Spade contemptuously calls Wilmer a "gunsel," which sounds like it means "guy with a gun," but is actually an old term for the passive partner in a homosexual relationship. There's a long scene where Spade tries to persuade the criminals that they need "a fall-guy" and Wilmer is just the person for the job. Gutman protests--maybe it's because Wilmer is his young lover, but wouldn't it be even more powerful if Spade is threatening to send Gutman's own daughter, Rhea, to jail?

Gutman eventually gives in, but twice says he loves Wilmer like a son: "I'm sorry indeed to lose you, and I want you to know that I couldn't be any fonder of you if you were my own son; but--well, by Gad!--if you lose a son it's possible to get another--and there's only one Maltese falcon." Mightn't this be an attempt to say some final paternal words to Rhea, without revealing the true situation to Spade? The final chapters of The Maltese Falcon are tense and twisty without thinking that Rhea and Wilmer are the same person--but if you go back and reread them from this angle, they become even more
interesting.

The story opens in San Francisco at a private investigation agency whose case backlog is empty, and the cases it has handled have been as exciting as "finding a lost dog". That all changes when a "knock out" of a woman (our femme fatale) enters the firm. She tells Spade/Shayne (our protagonist, heretofore referred to as Spade) that she needs to find her sister, whose been "seduced" away from her family in New York by a man named Thursby (Davis' femme fatale says she was jilted, and that she's looking for another man named Farrell). When Archer/Ames (Archer, for the rest of this essay) joins them, she says that she’s arranged to meet with Thursby/Farrell that evening. With cash in hand ($100 for each partner, received greedily), she hires the agency to tail him to her sister and, at her request, Archer agrees to handle the job personally. This seemingly simple job costs him his life, leading Spade to become a suspect in his partner’s murder by the police. They implicate Spade because of his hasty departure from the crime scene (without even looking at the body), his lie when he said he’d called his partner’s sudden widow (he had his secretary do it), and the fact that Thursby, whom he’d told them his partner was tailing, is found dead that same night. Though Spade’s fast talking skill (& relationship with the lower ranked police officer) will enable him to (at least, temporarily) satisfy them, the police will visit him again when Archer’s jealous (of the femme fatale she sees entering Spade’s apartment) wife makes them suspect an adulterous relationship between the two.

Spade meets with the femme fatale, who’s aware of the murder(s). Frightened, she asks him to help her. Spade admits that he and his partner didn’t really believe her story, but they did believe her money. Even though she is evasive and he believes that she’s lying, he agrees to help her and keep her name from the police. He takes what he thinks is all her money ($500) and leaves. As Spade investigates, he learns of a missing historical object from history (a bejeweled falcon statuette in two of the films, a pig’s horn filled with jewels in the other) that is missing. He then becomes acquainted with others, through their interest in locating the object. The first person is Cairo. In the first & third films, Cairo offers Space $5,000 if he can locate the object and then insists (with a gun) on searching Spade’s office for it. Spade easily removes Cairo’s gun from him, examines the contents of his wallet, and pockets the cash. Then Spade gives Cairo back his gun only to be "held up" again by Cairo, who then searches the office without further resistance, since Spade’s already been paid. In the second film, it’s a bit more comical. Spade arrives at his apartment to find that it’s been ransacked. Travers, who’s done the same to his office locking the secretary in a closet, then arrives, admitting what he’s done, and has a similar conversation. Of course, Spade is quicker on the draw than Cairo, and the whole bit is played rather comically.

Through the course of Spade’s investigation, he’ll notice that he’s being tailed by Cook/Kenneth. This hired gun character is also no match for the quicker Spade, who can easily disarm him, but will eventually lead him to the kingpin Gutman/Barabbas character. It’s this Gutman character that tells Spade the history of the object and some idea of its great value; he/she will also become the third person to pay Spade for locating it (either $25,000 now with $25,000 after it’s sold, or 10% of its sale price - estimated to be $1,000,000). Spade also learns that all three parties know each other, and that the other two had learned of the object through Gutman because he had hired them too, before they betrayed him. The object will arrive from Hong Kong on a ship (La Paloma), which will be burned by the Gutman & Cook characters. Even though Cook will kill the ship’s Captain, Spade will get the object from him before the others can. In the first & third films, Spade will put the object out of reach. Later, he’ll have Effie retrieve it, bringing it to his apartment, where all the interested & non-trusting parties have spent the night. In the second film, he’ll get the object at the dock, before the others who are also there, and then negotiate with them.

In each of the films, Spade discusses with Gutman et al the need to have a fall guy for the police, for the three (Archer, Thursby, and La Paloma’s Captain) murders. Each time, they settle on the Cook character, though he’ll later escape in films 1 & 3. In film 2, the police are also at the dock, which shortens things a bit, and it’s the femme fatale escapes. Also in all three films, the Gutman character will have only $10,000 to give Spade, before they learn the object is a fake and the money is taken back from him (only Greenstreet’s Gutman gives Spade $1,000 for his trouble, just as Hammett’s does in the book). Gutman will surmise that the replica must have been created by the Russian, who must have suspected its value from Gutman’s negotiations with him. In films 1 & 3 (and the book), Gutman & Cairo will go off together, planning to try and locate the object once again. In film 2, already at the dock, the police catch everyone except the femme fatale. However, in all three films, it’s Spade, though he’s initially tempted by her charms to do otherwise, who hands the femme fatale over to the police as the responsible party for his partner’s murder.

The differences between the first and third films are largely in their execution. The second film, however, diverges greatly and resembles a comedy, more than a drama, at times. It is unclear as to whether the over-the-top performances by Davis and William are intentional or not. In fact, its beginning shows William’s "Spade" being thrown out of another town, and returning to his ex-"partner"’s office only because he’d sent a client his way. Also in this film, Spade recognizes Barabbas (Gutman) as an infamous character, known to the police. Plus, it is interesting that the Gutman character played in this version is a woman because, while the Cook character is referred to by Gutman as "like my own son" in the other two films, that same character (Kenneth) actually IS Barabbas’ son.

Huston’s film is 20 minutes, or more, longer than the previous adaptations, and it differs from the first two in that doesn’t portray the detective agency as one without viable clients (nor does Hammett’s novel) at its beginning. This third film also shows the partner’s sharing and an office with Spade (vs. having separate ones in the other two) and downplays, somewhat, the "love" relationship between Spade and his partner’s wife. One reason for its length is the fact that Huston has chosen to show us scenes which were only mentioned or alluded to in the first films - Archer being shot, Spade phoning Effie and asking her to call his partner’s wife, etc. AND the scene at the end (& a few of the others), with Spade deciding whether to turn in the femme fatale or not, is particularly wordy in this one. Of course, this one ends with the classic line (from Shakespeare's The Tempest, not Hammett's novel) "the stuff dreams are made of" (unless you count Ward Bond’s "huh?") whereas film 1 ends with Spade visiting the femme fatale in prison and film 2 ends with him turning her over to the police. The book’s final scene, back at Spade’s office, has him summing up the case for his secretary when his partner’s ex-wife arrives.

---------

Private eye Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer are approached by Miss Wonderly to follow a man, Floyd Thursby, who allegedly ran off with her younger sister. The two accept the assignment because the money is good, but Spade also implies that the woman looks like trouble, though she projects wholesome innocence. That night, Detective Tom Polhaus informs Spade that Archer has been shot and killed while tailing Thursby. Even later that night, two officers visit Spade at his apartment and inquire about Spade's whereabouts in the last few hours. Spade asks what the visit is really about. The officers say that Thursby was also killed and that Spade is a suspect, since Thursby likely killed Archer. They have no evidence against Spade at the moment, but tell him that they will be conducting an investigation into the matter. The next day, Spade gets a visit from Archer's wife, with whom he has been having an affair. The widow asks Spade if he killed Miles so that they could be together. Spade dismisses her and tells her to leave, and coldly orders his secretary Effie to remove all of Archer's belongings from the office. He then goes to a new address left in a note from his client, whose name he learns is Brigid O'Shaughnessy. He also finds out that Brigid never had a sister, and Thursby was her acquaintance who had betrayed her. Later, Spade is visited by another man, Joel Cairo, who offers Spade $5000 if the private eye can retrieve a figurine of a black bird that has recently arrived. While Spade has no idea what the man is talking about, he plays along. Suddenly, Cairo pulls a gun on Spade, and declares his intention to search Spade's office. But when he approaches Spade to search his person, Spade disarms him and knocks him unconscious. After cataloguing Cairo's belongings and questioning him in return, Spade returns Cairo's firearm and allows the man to search his office. Following this, Spade is again contacted by Brigid O'Shaughnessy. She offers her sympathies for the death of his partner. Spade senses a connection between O'Shaughnessy and Cairo, and casually mentions that Cairo has contacted him. O'Shaughnessy gets extremely nervous when she hears this. She tells Spade that she must meet with Cairo, and asks Spade to arrange a meeting. Spade agrees. When Cairo and Brigid O'Shaughnessy meet, they make references that the reader and Spade don't initially comprehend. Cairo says he is ready to pay for the black figurine. Brigid O'Shaughnessy, however, says she does not have it at the moment. They also refer to a mysterious figure, "G" ("the fat man" in the film), whom they seem to be scared of. The two then continue to talk about some events that happened overseas. Eventually, O'Shaughnessy insinuates that Cairo is a homosexual, and Cairo insinuates that O'Shaughnessy simply uses her body to get what she wants, and the two begin to fight. At this point, the police show up, coincidentally, to talk to Spade. Spade greets them at the door, but refuses to let them in. The officers say they know Spade was having an affair with Archer's wife; just as they are about to leave, they hear Cairo screaming for help. They force their way into Spade's apartment, and Spade invents a story that involves describing how Cairo and O'Shaughnessy were just play-acting. The officers seem to accept, if not believe, Spade's story, but they take Cairo with them down to the station for some "grilling". Spade sends Brigid to stay with Effie, where she will be safe. The next morning, Spade makes his way to the hotel where Cairo is staying. Cairo shows up disheveled, saying that he was held in police custody through the night. Meanwhile, Spade notices that he's being tailed by some kid named Wilmer Cook. He confronts the gunsel[1], and tells him that both he and his boss, "G," will have to deal with him at some point. He later receives a call from Casper Gutman, who wishes to meet with him. Gutman, a huge person weighing over 300 lbs, says he will pay handsomely for the black bird. Spade implies that he can get the item (though at this point this is a bluff), but wants to know what it is first. Gutman tells him that the figurine was a gift from the Island of Malta to the King of Spain a few hundred years ago, but was lost on ship in transit. It was covered with fine jewels, but acquired a layer of black enamel at some time, to conceal its value (estimated to be in the millions). Gutman learned of its whereabouts seventeen years ago, and has been looking for it ever since. He traced it to the home of a Russian General, then sent three of his 'agents' (Cairo, Thursby and Brigid O'Shaughnessy) to get it. The latter supposedly did retrieve the figurine, but learned of its value and decided to keep it for themselves. Spade starts to get dizzy at this point (Gutman has drugged him), and when he goes to leave, Wilmer trips him and knocks him out by kicking his temple. When Spade awakens, he returns to his office and tells the story of the Maltese Falcon to Effie. Soon afterwards, an injured man, identified as Captain Jacobi of "La Paloma," shows up at the office; he drops a package on the floor and then dies of gunshot wounds. Spade opens the package, and finds the figurine falcon. Sam is called away from the office. To prevent losing the item, Spade stores the package at a bus station lost luggage counter and mails himself the collection tag. He first goes to the dock where "La Paloma" was anchored, but learns that a fire had been started on board. He then proceeds to the place Rhea Gutman said she was when she phoned earlier. There he finds a drugged-up, seventeen-year old girl, her stomach all scratched up by a pin in attempts to keep herself awake, who just manages to give him some information about the whereabouts of Brigid, which turns out to be a false lead. When he arrives back at his apartment, he finds O'Shaughnessy in a shadowy doorway. Inside, Wilmer, Cairo, and Gutman are there waiting. Gutman hands Spade $10,000 in cash in exchange for the bird. Spade takes the money, but in addition says that they need a "fall guy" to take the blame for the murders of at least Thursby and Jacobi, if not Archer as well. Reluctantly, both Cairo and Gutman agree to make Wilmer the fall guy. Gutman proceeds to tell Spade the missing pieces of the story. The night that Thursby was killed, he was first approached by Wilmer and Gutman. The latter attempted to reason with him, but Thursby remained loyal to Brigid O'Shaughnessy and refused to cooperate. Later things escalated, then Wilmer shot Thursby. Also, Brigid O'Shaughnessy had seduced Captain Jacobi and hid the Falcon with him. Later, Brigid O'Shaughnessy instructed Jacobi to deliver the package to Spade. Once Gutman learned of this fact, he attempted to remove Spade from the situation with the spiked drink. Wilmer managed to shoot the captain, but Jacobi still got to Spade's office to deliver the figurine. After finishing his story, Gutman warns Spade to be very careful with Brigid O'Shaughnessy as she is not to be trusted. Spade places a call to his secretary, Effie, and asks her to go the office and pick up the figurine. Effie brings it to Spade's apartment, and Spade hands the package to Gutman, who at this time is overwhelmed with excitement. He checks the figurine, but quickly learns that it is a fake. He realizes with dismay that the Russian must have discovered the true value of the falcon and made a copy. During this time, Wilmer manages to escape from Spade's apartment. Gutman quickly regains composure, and decides to go back to Europe to continue the search. Before he leaves, Gutman asks Spade for the $10,000. Spade returns $9000, saying he's keeping the remainder for his time and expenses. Then Cairo and Gutman leave Spade's apartment. Immediately after Cairo and Gutman leave, Spade phones the police department and tells them the entire story. Wilmer killed Jacobi and Thursby. He also tells them what hotel Gutman is staying at and urges them to hurry, since Gutman and Cairo are leaving town soon. Afterwards, Spade angrily asks Brigid O'Shaughnessy why she killed Miles Archer. At first, Brigid O'Shaughnessy acts horrified at this accusation, but seeing that she cannot lie anymore, she drops the act. She wanted to get Thursby out of the picture so that she could have the Falcon for herself, so she hired Archer to scare him off. When Thursby didn't leave, she killed Archer and attempted to pin the crime on Thursby. When Thursby was later killed himself, she knew that Gutman was in town and that she needed another protector, so she came back to Spade. However, she says that she's also in love with Spade and would have come back to him anyhow. Spade coldly replies that the penalty for murder is most likely twenty years, and he'll wait for her until she gets out. If they hang her, Spade says that he'll always remember her. He goes on to say that while he despised Miles Archer, the man was his partner, and that he's going to turn her in to the police for his murder as that was a line he could not cross in the industry of detective work. Brigid O'Shaughnessy begs him not to, but he replies that he has no choice. When the police get Gutman, Gutman will finger Sam and Brigid as accomplices. Thus the only way Spade can avoid getting charged is to say he played both sides against each other. He tells Brigid O'Shaughnessy that he has some feelings for her, but that he simply can't trust her. Just before the police arrive, Brigid O'Shaughnessy asks Spade if the Falcon had been real, and he'd gotten the entire $10,000, would it have made a difference. Spade replies that, while she shouldn't be so sure that he's crooked, more money would have been one more item on "her side." When the police finally show up at Spade's apartment, Spade immediately turns over Brigid O'Shaughnessy as Archer's killer. They tell Spade that the kid Wilmer was waiting for Gutman at the hotel and shot him when he arrived. Spade also hands over the $1000 bill, and the falcon to the police as evidence.

THE BIG SLEEP
Moving past the unexplained deaths, bodies being moved and various other confusions – such as what happens to Geiger’s “sucker list” – we still come down to Philip Marlowe. William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman – the writing team behind “The Big Sleep” – weren’t concerned with some soon-to-be mythic detective as much as they were concerned with making a film. As a result, we don’t end up with Philip Marlowe; we end up with Sam Spade. And not Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade but the Sam Spade of John Huston’s “The Maltese Falcon.” It’s all in the women. Sam Spade is the womanizer. Philip Marlowe’s attitude toward women is a lot more nuanced and somewhat ambiguous. In the film, Bogie is beating the frails off with a stick – to use the parlance of the time – in bookstores, taxi cabs, cafes, wherever. Bogart as Marlowe is often calling women “sugar” or “angel.” He’s also puffing himself by sticking his thumbs in his belt and rubbing his ear to indicate that he’s musing on this or that hanging thread. In the novel, Marlowe never knew Rusty [Shawn in the film] Regan, never “saw him around” or traded gunshots with him as Regan bootlegged rum from Mexico across the California state line. It should be pointed out that the Marlowe of The Big Sleep is the toughest Marlowe in any of the books and that may be rooted in the short stories that originally appeared in the pulp magazines and that Chandler “cannibalized” (his word) for the novel. It is the only time in any of the novels that Marlowe shoots anyone. Even so, there is nothing in Bogart’s performance that implies any of the fatalism or philosophical detachment of Marlowe. There is just no place for Philip Marlowe in a Bogie and Bacall picture. *** These are not the longings and musings of a womanizer. Marlowe is an almost pathological romantic in that no woman could possibly meet the high standards of love and friendship he demands. It might also explain why he doesn’t have any friends. Or even a cat.

***In the film, when Carmen Sternwood sneaks into Marlowe’s apartment, Marlowe angrily and physically throws her out. Yet, we really don’t know why he’s angry. We can assume any number of things and any one of them could be correct. In the book, there is little doubt. When Marlowe gets home, Carmen is in the bed naked. Marlowe pleads with her to leave thinking “It’s so hard for women – even nice women – to realize that their bodies are not irresistible.” He finally gets her to leave – he threatens to physically throw her out but doesn’t – and then Chandler writes, “I went back to the bed and looked down on it. The imprint of her head was still in the pillow, of her small corrupt body still on the sheets. . . . I put my empty glass down and tore the bed to pieces savagely.”

There are many differences. The homosexual relationship between Geiger and Carol Lundgren is only hinted at. Geiger's business of renting pornographic books is only hinted at. It is not Eddie...

A major difference between the novel and the film has, of course, to do with the character of General Sternwood’s elder daughter Vivian, who becomes more important and more sympathetic in the film version. Though such changes may have been necessitated by the casting of Lauren Bacall as Vivian, the alterations in her role are also very much a part of the film’s larger tendency toward more sympathetic treatment of female characters. But there are also a number of other significant additions that have been made for the film version: The famous double-entendre dialogue about horseracing between Bogart and Bacall does not exist in the book, nor does the final confrontation with Eddie Mars which is the film’s climax. Marlowe’s contact with the police (and with political corruption) is greatly reduced in the film. The missing Rusty Regan (married to Vivian in the book) becomes an old friend of Marlowe’s and is renamed Sean Regan (not married to Vivian) in the film. The movie converts a helpful taxi driver into a feisty female and a helpful bookstore girl into one who is also sexually aggressive. And the death of Harry Jones is given a very special extra dimension in the film version. The film also adds a pair of additional “couples”: twin “hostesses” at Mars’ nightclub and two darkly comical hoodlums named Sidney and Pete—who belong to a long line of peculiarly Hawksian pairs and couples. There are noteworthy omissions as well: Norris, the Sternwood butler, is nobler and less a figure of fun in the book; Carmen Sternwood’s attempt to kill Marlowe is left out of the film, as is any clear sign of her guilt in the Regan murder; the homosexuality, nudity, and pornography encountered in the book are predictably toned down or eliminated in the film; some of the book’s policemen don’t appear at all in the film*; and Mona Mars’ character is greatly reduced, mostly for the sake of Bacall’s Vivian.

In general, these changes and omissions make the movie less misogynistic, less socially aware, and less despairing than the novel. Whereas the book’s Marlowe gets sick with disgust over the women he’s encountered, the movie Marlowe works his comparatively happy way through a town which seems rich in smart, independent, worldly women. Chandler not only gives strong glimpses of police corruption, but also presents the Sternwoods’ oil properties in “waste land” imagery of the T.S. Eliot variety; Hawks’ film not only eases up on the police, it totally disregards the visual possibilities of the Sternwood oil works. And although Bogart’s battle-scarred stoicism seems perfect for the role of Marlowe, the movie’s Marlowe has a resiliency and self-assurance which stand somewhat in contrast to the Marlowe who feels, in the novel, that he has become part of the corruption around him. At the end, the movie’s Marlowe has the prospect of a relationship with a Vivian who looks “good—real good” in a dangerous situation, while the book’s Marlowe is left alone with bad memories and two belts of scotch that “didn’t do me any good.”

The Hawks/Bogart Marlowe is less of a solitary than Chandler’s, though both play the lone-wolf adventurer on more than one occasion. The movie Marlowe has more pals: Vivian and Regan, with the latter converted into another of Hawks’ professionals. In the Hawks version, Marlowe is not only an ex-cop who “rated high on insubordination,” he’s also an ex-revenuer who “traded shots between drinks, or drinks between shots” when the bootlegging Regan was “on the other side.” With the missing Regan as an old and partly forgotten friend, the movie’s Marlowe has one more reason for persisting on the case when the Sternwoods and the police tell him to stop. But the changes in Vivian and Regan also enhance themes of personal integrity and mutual respect that seem a little closer to Hawks than to Chandler. And so while Chandler’s Marlowe feels himself sinking deeper into the corruption, the Hawks/Bogart Marlowe clings assuredly to a personal code for which evil may simply be “the other side.”

For the movie’s Marlowe, morality has less to do with the book’s wasteland of corruption than with the way people behave under the pressure of threatening events. Thus, amid the deceptions that are essential to film noir, the movie’s Marlowe makes strong distinctions between kinds of people, regardless of whether or not they are “on the other side.” In the film, when little Harry Jones comes to Marlowe to sell information, “one right guy to another,” Marlowe’s growing respect is based not only on Jones’ insistence on his own individual dignity, but also on his detached admiration for the beating that two professional thugs administer to Marlowe in an alley (as Jones watches from a distance). And the movie Marlowe views both Jones and the killer Canino with that detached professional respect; both are “good,” even though Marlowe takes special relish in killing Canino (after the latter murders Jones while Marlowe, not fully grasping the situation, stands by). Marlowe’s contempt is reserved for Harry’s acquisitive “lover” Agnes (“Wish me luck, copper—I got a raw deal.” “Your kind always does.”), and for Eddie Mars. Canino and Mars are both very definitely “on the other side,” but Marlowe despises Mars because he puts people in danger but rarely puts his own neck on the line. Agnes has similar failings, though on a smaller scale. Chandler’s book offers no climactic confrontation with Mars because there Carmen is clearly the murderer of Regan. The film is rather ambiguous about who killed Regan: the likeliest possibility seems to be that Carmen is guilty there too, but that Marlowe will try to pin the killing on the now-dead Mars and have Carmen “sent away” by Vivian. But in any event, the film’s climax—with Mars being sent to death in a trap of his own setting—makes the question of personal risk-taking a far greater moral issue than it was in the book. Indeed, the almost exclusive importance of that issue in the violent final scene of the film seems an especially disturbing example of what Andrew Sarris has called Hawks’ “distinctly bitter view of life.”

Of course, Chandler’s “view of life” is also “distinctly bitter”; but whereas the novelist gives us a man of comparatively noble instincts caught in a whirlpool of corruption, the filmmaker gives us a man of comparatively noble instincts struggling to maintain his self-respect in a fog of ambiguous events. With the erosion of Chandler’s explicit references to homosexuality, nudity, perversion, and pornography, the movie’s plot is even more irrational and mysterious than the genre requires. And with murder and motives complicated by plot adjustments surrounding Lauren Bacall’s more sympathetic Vivian, the film’s narrative more than lives up to its legendary incomprehensibility. But if the movie’s plot is even more of a labyrinth than the book’s, the Hawks version has made the confusion into a virtue through an abstraction process on the one hand and through delicate changes in Marlowe’s angle of approach on the other. The movie’s elimination of the book’s more explicit and critical social awareness nudges the story much closer to nightmare and myth. Hawks minimizes the realism in a way that makes the tale less a darkly realistic vision of the Los Angeles underworld than an existential vision grounded in the myths of big-city crime.

The film comes closest to an existential view of things in Harry Jones’ death scene. In both the book and the film, Jones dies when he takes cyanide in a drink which Canino has humbled him into accepting. In both works, Canino challenges Jones in macho terms, needling Jones with the speculation that his “girl friend” wouldn’t be afraid to take the drink. And in both cases, Jones announces that he must be “yellow” and accepts the drink. But in the book the cyanide kills Jones before he can say anything else, while in the film Jones (Elisha Cook Jr.) laughs as he chokes to death. “What’s funny?” asks Canino. “Nothing’s funny,” says Jones, choking, and he drops dead. No movie death that I know of speaks more eloquently of death as an absolute end which is at once horrifying and absurd. That moment—together with the dull, dead click we hear when Marlowe jostles Geiger’s corpse—makes the film’s response to its own title desolatingly succinct.

Chandler’s fiction and Hawks’ films share this agnostic view of death, and it is just one of the points they have in common with a post-World War I phenomenon that includes Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, Hecht and MacArthur; such lesser lights as John MacGavock Grider, Elliott White Springs, and John Monk Saunders; and, to a modest extent, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Seen in these terms, Chandler and Hawks are part of a generation of storytellers whose works reflect the disillusionment of World War I and the cynicism of Prohibition while dramatizing a very modern and perhaps unprecedented reliance on personal style and integrity. Theirs is a personal ethics cut loose from traditional American optimism, but not from the American faith in the dignity of the individual. It is an individualism which mixes the hardboiled wisecracking of the common man with an aristocratic code of behavior and an emphasis on manners that has nothing to do with drawingrooms. At its most simplistic, it is part of the tough-but-sensitive syndrome; at its best, it includes the varieties of hard-pressed integrity embodied by Philip Marlowe in both version of The Big Sleep. And, as it happens, this individualism is also reflected in the stoical aesthetics that both Chandler and Hawks brought to the popular artforms which they have done so much to enliven.
IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES, BASED ON CHANDLER’S & HAWKS’S PERSONALITIES
Athanasourelis, John Paul. "Film Adaptation and the Censors: 1940s Hollywood and Raymond Chandler." Studies in the Novel. 35.3 (2003): 325-38. Print.

• Chandler’s fiction has an inherently cinematic quality; he was a Hollywood screenwriter
• Censorship from about 1930-1960 “regulated the transition of book-to-film projects”. The first Chandler adaptation was produced in the 40s and the Code “shaped narratives according to perceived mainstream moral values”.
• “Hollywood gravely misrepresented Chandler’s world-view, one which insisted on not reducing the moral complexities of modern American life to the convenient mythologizing of America’s self-appointed champions of the good.” Chandler did not compartmentalize people and rejected the possibility of an ideal society.
• The film “defuses Chandler’s social critique, transforming plot and adapting characters when not eliminating them outright.”
• “Chandler’s Philip Marlowe functions as a peacemaker and is far more likely to negotiate among warring individuals than incite them to violence.”
• “Another striking difference between the novel and the film can be seen in the treatment of the police. His interest lay in the critique of society in terms of its power structure, and he found in crime the ideal means by which to illustrate societal tensions. Thus, most specifically and consistently, his portrayal of the police and the private detective’s interactions with them constitute the core elements of his novels. Throughout all of Chandler’s novels, police corruption is examined as closely as any crime scene clue in whodunit narratives.”
• “Although Hawks’s stoic masculine ethos representation promises to reflect the introspective ethos of Chandler’s world, his film ultimately presents a hermetically sealed Hollywood world where conventional mores triumph.”
• Hawks shifts responsibility for the death of Rusty (Sean in the film) Regan from Carmen Sternwood to Eddie Mars. In the novel, Mars is not Regan’s killer; rather, he helps Vivian dispose of the body (to protect Carmen) and then blackmails her. Hawks chose not to punish Carmen, leaving Mars as the fall guy and allowing Vivian to be a love-interest for Marlowe.
• The film seeks to resolve the narrative into a “neat thematic package”.
• It was actually the censors who wrote the final scene in Geiger’s house where Mars becomes the guilty party—and Marlowe sends him out the door to be shot by his own men. They were “concerned, not with narrative credibility or aesthetics, but solely with placing the white and black hats firmly on the appropriate heads.”
• Chandler leaves Marks untouched by divine retribution (unlike the film), challenging his readers’ sense of justice.
• The novel features and ethically ambiguous cop: Captain Gregory of the Missing Persons Bureau. Gregory is never mentioned in the film.
• “Chandler is careful to expose societal inequities that Hollywood typically glosses over.”
• Vivian’s presence declines in the novel and Chandler does not develop a romance plot between her and Marlowe, as Hawks does. The film is a complex crime narrative; more so a love story.
• The kissing scene in the car: Chandler uses to underscore Marlowe and Vivian’s mutual antagonism; Hawks uses it to show their mutual concern and affection.

DIFFERENCES OF PLOT AND STYLE

Poague, Leland. “Detecting Happiness: Chandler, Hawks and The Big Sleep (Again.)”Australian Screen Education, Issue 33 (Summer 2004): 122-126. Print.

• Striking difference: Mrs. Vivian Rutledge (Vivian Regan in novel) and Philip Marlowe as romantic (“classic Hollywood”) couple.
• Chandler’s Marlow conspires with Eddie Mars and Vivian to cover up Carmen’s’ murder of Rusty (Sean in the movie) Regan.
• Critical feature of the film: “exuberant comic wit of its dialogue, especially the sexually loaded exchanges between Vivian and Marlowe.
• Reshoots were done specifically for this reason.
• Chandler’s Marlowe is devoted to solitude, but has positive relationship with Gen. Sternwood.
• Gen. Sternwood seen only in the beginning of the film.
• The world’s nastiness reflects little on Marlowe in the film; in the novel “everything is colored by Marlowe’s tartly cynical perceptions.
• Marlowe is much more at ease with women in the film than in the novel.
• Motivation for asking Vivian “What has Eddie Mars got on you?” o Novel: masculine loyalty and private-eye skepticism o Film: motivated by feelings for Vivian
• Novel: Eddie and Mrs. Mars are comfortably estranged; not so in the film.
• Biggest paradox of Hawks’ version: despite the dark subject matter and scenes, it is a delightful movie. The blocking, cutting, and soundtrack demonstrate mastery of the medium. The crime story itself is not nearly as important as the fun Bogie and Bacall were clearly having.

ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES & EACH ARTIST’S STYLE OF STORYTELLING (Definition of ONTOLOGY: a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being; a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of things that have existence.

Librach, R. S. “Adaptation and Ontology: The Impulse towards Closure in Howard Hawks’s Version of The Big Sleep.” Literature Film Quarterly, 19.3 (1991): 164-175. Print.

Similarities:
• Hawks “reestablishes Chandler’s sultry, fog-shrouded Los Angeles as a city from which not even the rain can wash away the corruption.”
• Marlowe survives because he is tough, clever, and skillful.
• In both novel and film, Marlowe personally and professionally respects the “little man”.

Differences:
• Hawks ties up a loose end by having two cars leave the Geiger house; it was necessary for his Marlowe to know who killed Owen Taylor.
• Chandler supplies Agnes’s line that she has never had “a guy who’s smart all the way round the course”; Hawks expands on the racetrack metaphor in the famous exchange between Vivian & Marlowe.
• The film makes a crucial association between sex and intellect (more than the novel, which did not develop the romance between V & M). The scene w/Dorothy Malone, with its suggestive dialogue and innuendo, furthers Hawks’s assertion that the bonding between male and female is initiated on an intellectual premise.
• Screenwriters William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett added the alley scene.
• For Chandler, it is Rusty Regan who is intended to be Marlowe’s alter ego; in the film it is Harry Jones.
• Hawks eliminates three Chandler scenes: Mars’s presences in the house at Realito, certain exchanges between Marlowe and Vivian, and another Marlowe audience with Gen. Sternwood.
• Prior to the intervention of the censors, Hawks shared the premise with Chandler that Eddie Mars killed Sean Regan.
• Hawks endorses Marlowe’s belief that Joe Brody killed Owen Taylor and Eddie Mars killed Sean Regan, thought he cannot confirm his suspicion in either case. Both are “punished” in the film: Brody is shot by Geiger’s lover Lundgren, and Mars by his own men.

Details run throughout Chandler's text. They come in the form of slap-you-in-the-face similes, lively images and repeated metonyms. The figurative language unifies the book. With every turn of the page we are blasted with sly similes. Chandler can pack five or more on a page and still maintain the super-cool voice of his narrator, Marlowe. Agnes' silver nails move rather than she. But Chandler's most crafty play is in Chapter Twenty-six. He uses figurative language to make his characters predators or prey. Marlowe first "[hangs] there motionless, like a lazy fish in water", then he moves "like a cat on a mantel" (Chandler 171, 172). Marlowe is stalking the office while Canino speaks to Jones in a "purring voice;" Jones has a "bird-like voice" (175, 171). Later, Marlowe addresses Jones's body and says "You died like a poisoned rat, Harry, but you're no rat to me" (178). Harry Jones wasn't Marlowe's prey. The dynamic of the chapter is set up through imagery and metaphor.

I love Chandler's figurative language and I love his narrator. Marlowe is the reason that this language is possible. Marlowe isn't going to shuffle around topics; he goes straight to the point and is determined to drag you along. That is why he uses such language &emdash; to pull us in and let us understand. We hear you Marlowe. We are getting every point. We can better understand his character if we know what he is thinking about. The details offer us insider information. We see what little things he notices -- the little things that add up.

I miss the knight in the movie. Hawks deprives us of Chandler's first details. Chandler's Marlowe tells us about his suit, shirt, handkerchief, shoes, and even his "black wool socks with dark blue clocks on them" (3). He gives us a detailed description; Chandler wanted us to picture "everything the well-dressed private detective should be" (3). But the most lasting image that Chandler creates in the first page is that of the knight almost attempting to release the maiden. The stained glass window seemed to really make an impression on Marlowe "if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him" (4). This both makes an impression on me, and tells me that Marlowe must be an active guy &emdash; he can't sit around and wait for things to happen. We don't get to see the image of the knight in the window, nor do we get to see Chandler's knight-like character of Marlowe. (In the novel he is too busy righting wrongs to have time to love a maiden. He can only try to save them.)

I really missed the details in the movie. I wanted to see Agnes's silver nails and hear Canino purr. But they didn't. Agnes becomes just a fake bookstore broad, and Canino disappears. Brody kills Jones. The knight becomes a few squares of glass. Marlowe doesn't feel a struggle. The novel's appeal is in its language. Unfortunately, the art of language leaves the story and the foundation becomes the actors in Hawks' Big Sleep.

The Big Sleep is hailed as a noir success. Leonard Maltin calls it "so incredibly entertaining." This movie is actually part of the video selection at the neighborhood Blockbuster store (which has a limited selection), so it must be a famous movie. I like to think that only a good movie would still be watched after fifty-three years. But, everything good about the book is missing or distorted (plot, characters, details). The plot is too convoluted to make a movie (Hawks never resolves who killed the Sternwood's driver), but Hawks' Big Sleep is still a success and, well, a good movie. Why? They changed it. They altered the plot and the characters to make a movie. Tim Dirks points out that the movie was originally released without the extra Bogart and Bacall scenes, that Hawks added "some of the toughest, most sexually-electric, innuendo-filled dialogue in film history." One The Big Sleep is appropriate for the audience of books, the other for the audience of movies.

I prefer the book, but I can see how someone enchanted by the silver screen would be enchanted by this movie. The greatest reason being the foundation of the film: Bogart and Bacall. The added scenes, Marlowe's altered character and the plot changes prove that the movie was altered to create a great romance between Marlowe/Bogart and Vivian/Bacall. The most entertaining alteration was that of Marlowe's character. The differences are easy to recognize. The scene with Marlowe and Sternwood is almost exactly like that in the book (minus the details). The scene with Marlowe and Vivian is also like that of the book: unfriendly. We get to glimpse Bogart's Marlowe after this.

First, Marlowe goes to the library and tells the beautiful, young, blonde librarian that he "collects blondes in bottles." He makes his way to Geiger's bookstore and flips up his hat brim, puts on sunglasses and acts like a geek to talk to Agnes. He then crosses the street and participates in some "sexually electric" behavior with the clerk (Dirks). In the novel she just describes Geiger, then Marlowe thanks her and leaves as it starts to rain. The reader barely notices the scene. In the movie she looks Marlowe up and down as she describes Geiger and when it starts to rain, she shuts the store and "takes down her hair" &emdash; they'd rather "get wet" in the store than out in the rain. One of Marlowe's best lines of the movie is as he leaves her and says, "So long, pal." Not only is he quite the lady's man in the movie, he's also a comedian.

The string of women doesn't end here. He goes on to have a female taxi driver who finds him irresistible: "If you can use me again sometime, call this number...night's better, I work during the day." (Did women work in the 40's &emdash; especially as taxi drivers?) The cigarette girls at Eddie Mar's bar get giggly around Marlowe. And finally (aside from Vivian falling in love with him and Carmen constantly telling him that he is "cute"), a gorgeous woman happens to be working in the coffee shop just so that she can smile at Marlowe. Why do women want this less-than-hunky, less-than-tall guy? He's Humphrey Bogart. So, if Marlowe's new sense of humor doesn't add comic relief to the movie, his interactions with women do.

The way Marlowe seems to attract women everywhere he goes is a change from Chandler's character. I think that Chandler's Marlowe is suave enough to intrigue women, but he is "cool" enough to not care. In the movie he cares. He urges Vivian on. A lot of their dialogue is very witty (especially that maintained from the book). Brackett, Faulkner and Furthman add dialogue that is incredibly suggestive. As I said, Vivian and Marlowe's first meeting is kept almost exactly as it was written in the book, except we don't see that Marlowe is inspecting Vivian's legs so we think they actually dislike one another. The insults and flippant comments must be flirtatious play &emdash; in the novel they seem sincere. Later Marlowe brings Carmen home from Geiger's and unlike the book, Vivian helps &emdash; this way they get to exchange more witty dialogue. The attraction grows...Vivian goes to his office to tell him about the bribe for Carmen's pictures, instead of a scene ending on "Oh, go to hell, Marlowe;" Bogart and Bacall get to act 'cute' playing with the police (Chandler 61). Perhaps the most altered part of this scene is when Marlowe says, "I think I'm beginning to like another of the Sternwoods." Slightly different. Sickeningly sweet. And forming the greatest breadth between the novel and the movie is the "notorious nightclub scene" between Vivian and Marlowe (Dirks). Vivian informs him that her rating "depends on who's in the saddle." Then Marlowe kisses Vivian on the ride home Eddie Mars'. (Well, I think it'd be more accurate to say that Bogart kissed Bacall, but we'll just believe what Hawks wants us to.)

Despite all of Marlowe and Vivian's changes, the greatest discrepancy between the book and movie is the end. Marlowe and Vivian profess their love for each other. After Marlowe has killed of the last the bad guys with the help of his "angel," he calls the police. They decide to tell Sternwood about Reagan and to send Carmen off for a "cure." This little bit of dialogue ends the movie:

Vivian: You've forgotten one thing, me.

Marlowe: What's wrong with you?

Vivian: Nothing you can't fix.

The sirens approach and the scene fades out, the lovers gaze longingly and hopefully into one another's eyes. Happily ever after.

In contrast, Chandler has Marlowe think about death, "the big sleep." The movie is a fairy tale, a happy ending heaped atop the giant load-bearing actors. The novel consists of minute details, running through, holding it together. The details and the beauty of the language of the book hold the novel higher: easier and more completely above the movie like the steel frame allows for refinement in architecture. The steel frame building can boast &emdash; it stands taller and more elegantly. Each serves its purpose well; the steel frame buildings just do so with more flair.