Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction, and Film Noir

by Gene D. Phillips

More than any other writer, Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) is responsible for raising detective stories from the level of pulp fiction to literature. Chandler's hard-boiled private eye Philip Marlowe set the standard for rough, brooding heroes who managed to maintain a strong sense of moral conviction despite a cruel and indifferent world.

Chandler's seven novels, including The Big Sleep (1939) and The Long Goodbye (1953), with their pessimism and grim realism, had a direct influence on the emergence of film noir. Chandler worked to give his crime novels the flavor of his adopted city, Los Angeles, which was still something of a frontier town, rife with corruption and lawlessness. In addition to novels, Chandler wrote short stories and penned the screenplays for several films, including Double Indemnity (1944) and Strangers on a Train (1951). His work with Billy Wilder and Alfred Hitchcock on these projects was fraught with the difficulties of collaboration between established directors and an author who disliked having to edit his writing on demand.

Creatures of Darkness is the first major biocritical study of Chandler in twenty years. Gene Phillips explores Chandler's unpublished script for Lady in the Lake , examines the process of adaptation of the novel Strangers on a Train , discusses the merits of the unproduced screenplay for Playback , and compares Howard Hawks's director's cut of The Big Sleep with the version shown in theaters. Through interviews he conducted with Wilder, Hitchcock, Hawks, and Edward Dmytryk over the past several decades, Phillips provides deeper insight into Chandler's sometimes difficult personality.

Chandler's wisecracking Marlowe has spawned a thousand imitations. Creatures of Darkness lucidly explains the author's dramatic impact on both the literary and cinematic worlds, demonstrating the immeasurable debt that both detective fiction and the neo-noir films of today owe to Chandler's stark vision.

Genres: Media Tie In, Nonfiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Fr. Gene D. Phillips, SJ, PhD

Reviews

[Gabriel]

I don't feel justified in giving this book a "rating," because I read only bits and pieces, the ones I needed. Those bits and pieces would probably rate three stars, in that Phillips spends an inordinate amount of time rehabilitating Chandler, a task taken up by so many of Chandler's commentators that you would think that at least one would say-- "All right. If I treat his work as literature, everyone will accept what I say on the basis of my argument, and I won't have to waste time (my own and the reader's) by claiming that other people agree with me that it is literature." This inferiority complex (more or less justified, depending on how you view "literature") is grating after only one paragraph. The stars come from Phillips research, and his tantalizing bibliography, which have both come in handy. At least if you don't have anything original to contribute, you can bring together everything already written under one cover.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of the book is an ¨appreciation,¨ collating the remarks of other critics and reviewers, but the scope of his research is remarkable for film criticism, taking in interviews with filmmakers, scripts and their revisions, and correspondence between principals. What disappointed me was a lack of biographical detail about Chandler, though there is a useful chronology at the beginning.

[Jay Amari · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is well referenced and the author's rose style is lucid and easy for the lay reader.

Much of what is here is something I need to complete my own book-in-process, so it's nice to read another writer's take on the same topics I am covering.

This is a great resource for any film lover who like the Chandler adaptations.