Cinematic Resolutions

Turning from fiction to film, chapter six investigates how hard-boiled and subsequent literary techniques have been translated into cinematic triumphs. Excellent scholarship exists on Hollywood’s adaptations of detective fiction beginning in the 1940s, a discussion requiring no review here. But new possibilities emerged in the neo-noir movement of the 1970s, with a sophisticated conversion of written strategies into visual framings and sonic tracks. Three sets of directors produced acknowledged masterpieces: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, Roman Polanski’s Chinatown, and the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple. In each, inventive camera movements and non-diegetic compositions intensify strains long present in the detective genre, with a fuller devotion to the distractions of “furniture” and a more pronounced focus on dialogue as snappy performance having replaced character construction, even plot.