Is the implication that he was a bit lazy in doing so? I
suspect that that
approach was (is?) used for many films made from novels,
especially popular
novels. You start with dialogue and a series of what could
become scenes
and work from there. From all that I can gather--main source
being
Lawrence Grobel's 1989 bio, entitled The Hustons--Huston
himself took
extraordinary care with Falcon, it being his first major
assignment. He had
great respect for the novel; moreover he said, "Hammett's
mentality and
philosophy were quite congenial to me" (down to the drinking
and cruel
jokes, I would add). For the first (and last, apparently)
time, he used a
Hitchcock approach, sketching or "storyboarding" every shot
and every
movement by the actors.
Two side bits: George Raft was to be Spade until four days
before filming
began. He turned it down because he didn't think it would be
an
"important" film. Late in his life, Huston credited Bogart
with
suggesting the famous Shakespeare line at the end.
Having dumped all that from pages to screen, let me add my
voice to the
requests for the Falcon papers, whatever their grades, to be
made
available! This discussion and what's coming have prompted me
to order MF
to use as an adaptation example in a film class, and order
Farewell, My
Lovely to use to present hardboiled in a popular culture
class. So I'm
saving many of these posts in a folder.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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