Interestingly, and with regard to offshoots, I have just watched ‘The Maltese Falcon’ with Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart (as Sam Spade the private eye). I have seen this film before and admired it as a Raymond Chandler-esque tough guy movie typical of the times.
Watching it with less awe and a bit more of a critical eye (dotage? maturity?) it occurred to me that the emphasis is less on ‘beat ’em up, gun’em down’ gangsterism and much more on dialogue, rapid, clever dialogue.
Characters react, to praise or insult, unpredictably. They suspect praise and brush insults aside as irrelevant. They are suspicious of each other, wary, and do not suffer fools gladly. The principals are bright, street-wise characters who,when, in extremis, know they can only rely on themselves.
All of this, the fear, the self reliance, the intelligent appraisal, the swiftly established characters, the one’s need to outwit the other, all of this is established through clever, and cleverly controlled dialogue.
There are only two or three major sets in the entire action. Spade’s office, his home, Greenstreet’s hotel, and two or three brief outdoor scenes. The film depends almost entirely on dialogue, on what’s being said.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett (1894-1961) wrote both the novel and the screenplay.
Hammett was a huge leftie, an alcoholic, suffered from chronic emphysema, was jailed for his leftie views, and was blacklisted when he refused to answer questions before ‘The House of Un-American Activities’.
This ‘House’ was the Yankee equivalent of the Inquisition with Joe McCarthy as the Witchfinder General. To a man this was a cowardly, contemptible rabble of which America should be thoroughly ashamed. It ruined lives and careers, turned people against each other, and had famously gutless Hollywood actors betray their colleagues and fellow actors in order to save their own careers.
Moneyed interests, on the other hand, panicked at this idea of wealth sharing, and actively set about demonising any idea of communal living.
Propaganda promoting fear of ‘Commies’ created wholly unnecessary wars. Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ certainly helped the propaganda.
‘Defending the free world against Communism’ gave legitimacy to the Korean and then the Vietnam wars, Nowadays the bogeyman is the Muslim world. All this has served to do is provide American armament manufacturing with almost a hundred years of non-stop production. The American economy has gradually come to depend hugely on its capacity to produce armaments.