It's always seemed to me that the best hard-boiled voices are
not just
cynical or amused by it all. They have an undertone of
disappointment, of
a loss of something or someone that could modulate into
sentimentalism if
they ever let up. I've always read the conclusive kiss-off of
Brigid
O'Shaughnessy, for instance, as more self-denial than
sadistic (regardless
of where Bogart took it). And I always liked Dick Powell's
Marlowe in
_Murder, My Sweet_, in part because he manages to express a
hurt behind the
wise cracks.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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