the classic noir period. However, Cain and Chandler are more well-known and have even had several of their works turned into screen adaptations. Cain’s and Chandler’s literary works
and the film adaptations are more closely related with the World War II era.
1.5 Integrity of the Thesis as a Literary Work
As film studies and pop culture are also accepted in literature, I believe that my topic is also relevant. However, my topic is not merely about film studies and pop culture. It is
clearly in the literature field. The theoretical framework I used was mostly based on Albert Camus’ literary and philosophical works. Also, I compared five film versions of five literary
works by Cain and Chandler. These five films are not merely adaptations of their novels that are only loosely based on the actual stories, but in fact they are truly representative of the
novels. In discussing the various works of Cain and Chandler here, the original novels and the film versions are discussed simultaneously. If there is a difference between the novel and
film versions, I mention that in my analysis. Cain and Chandler were also actively involved in the screenplays of their movie versions. Besides being writers, Cain and Chandler were
also talented screenwriters especially Chandler. Interestingly, Chandler was also the primary screenwriter in the movie version of Double Indemnity, which was actually written
by James M. Cain. Furthermore, another great writer, William Faulker, was also involved in screenwriting for James M. Cain’s film version of Mildred Pierce and Raymond Chandler’s
The Big Sleep. Therefore, when considering that great literary writers were also screenwriters of the five films under analysis, it is clear that the integrity of the original literary works is
maintained in the film versions, as prominent writers of the period ensured that the narrative and noir elements of the novels were also depicted on the Big Screen. Films of this time
period generally did not deviate much from the novel versions as artistic integrity was important in the filming process for James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler.
An example of James M. Cain’s writing style in his novel The Postman Always Rings Twice can be seen in the excerpt below taken from pg. 3.
They threw me off the hay truck about noon. I had swung on the night before, down at the border, and as soon as I got up there under the canvas, I went to sleep. I needed
plenty of that, after three weeks in Tia Juana, and I was still getting it when they pulled off to one side to let the engine cool. Then they saw a foot sticking out and
threw me off. I tried some comical stuff, but all I got was a dead pan, so that gag was out. They gave me a cigarette, though, and I hiked down the road to find something to
eat.
That was when I hit this Twin Oaks Tavern. It was nothing but a roadside sandwich joint, like a million others in California. There was a lunchroom part, and over that a
house part, where they lived, and off to one side a filling station, and out back a half dozen shacks that they called an auto court. I blew in there in a hurry and began
looking down the road. When the Greek showed, I asked if a guy had been by in a Cadillac. He was to pick me up here, I said, and we were to have lunch. Not today,
said the Greek. He layed a place at one of the tables and asked me what I was going to have. I said orange juice, corn flakes, fried eggs and bacon, enchilada, flapjacks, and
coffee. Pretty soon he came out with the orange juice and the corn flakes.
This is typical of James M. Cain’s writing style in all of his novels as an American hard-core crime fiction writer. His writing style is sparse in a first-person perspective, as a
reflection of the Great Depression. As he was a newspaperman, he writes in a reporting style. This first-person perspective was also used to depict how they characters themselves would
write as if they were telling their own stories in a sort of confessional perspective relaying the events that unfolded leading up to their demise. Cain avoided having a moral tone or message
to his writing style to convey a gritty and dark side of living during the Great Depression. He writes in a minimalist writing style only conveying the most essential information with
straightforward and oftentimes brutal simplicity. This writing style is also carried over to the Big Screen as a first person narrative in the same mold as the novel version.
The jargon and word choice that Cain uses in his novels is also done in the same style as in the film versions. His characters are also self-destructive losers and everyman
characters, generally because of a femme fetale. He also wanted this style of writing to be
conveyed to the Big Screen in his major works such as Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, which along with The Postman Always Rings Twice, were shown in movie theaters during the
World War II era. Cain originally considered movies to be an inferior art form to the printed form. However, this is ironic as Cain eventually wanted to pursue a career as a scriptwriter
also. He worked on several scripts, but he was not as successful as Raymond Chandler in scriptwriting. As Cain and Chandler were actively involved in the screenplays for their own
novels turned into films, with the exception of Double Indemnity, in which Chandler primarily was the screenwriter, they strived to keep the particular mood and writing style of
their dime-store novels the same on the Big Screen. Chandler’s writing style is similar to that of Cain in that Chandler also writes in a
terse and hardboiled fashion about a male protagonist in a first-person perspective. The difference is that Chandler writes from the perspective of a detective, Philip Marlowe, who is
an everyday man with a distrustful and jaded perspective of those around him. Chandler uses many wisecracks to defy authority figures like police officers and political figures in his
novels that are also transferred to the Big Screen. His use of similes in a negative sense is also found in the film versions as in the novels, such as found in The Big Sleep. Marlow is
very clever in using his similes by saying such things as: 1 The heat made me feel like a New England boiled dinner. 2:46.
2 Her eyes became narrow and almost black and as shallow as enamel on a cafeteria tray. 12:56.
3 She was as limp as a fresh-killed rabbit. 14:72. 4 The boy stood glaring at him with sharp black eyes in a face as hard and white as
cold mutton fat. 18:10. 5 You leak information like a radio announcer. 23:29.
6 Her eyelids were flickering rapidly, like moth wings. 25:12. 7 I was as empty of life as a scarecrows pockets. 25:1.
8 There was a dry click, like a small icicle breaking. I hung there motionless, like a lazy fish. 26:9.
9 The purring voice was now as false as an usherettes eyelashes and as slippery as a watermelon seed. 30:44.
All of these examples show what a clever and gifted writer Chandler was in showing how Philip Marlowe had to maneuver and survive in his noir world. Marlowe makes many
biting and witty remarks in his interactions with other characters in Chandler’s novels, such as The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely Murder, My Sweet – film version. The wry
personality of Philip Marlow is found in the first paragraph of the novel The Big Sleep, as he says, “I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn’t care who knew it. I was everything
the well-dressed private detective ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars.” The wisecrack remarks of Marlowe are found in Farewell, My Lovely also as Marlowe talks about
Moose Malloy and says he looks “about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of an angel food”. Then when a person gives Marlow a picture of a blond-haired woman, he says, “A
blond to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.” Therefore, these examples show that Chandler, like Cain, was also a gifted writer in making witty dialog and clever
phrases that he could also transfer to a movie format with ease as a talented scriptwriter. Both writers used the same literary styles in their novels as they did in their film versions as
scriptwriters.
1.6 Importance of the Study
