Customer Reviews

Hardboiled Hollywood: The Origins of the Great Crime Films

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The book is lively and entertaining from beginning to end. As an examination of the ways in which filmmakers have transformed texts both classic and pulp into resonant crime movies, HARDBOILED HOLLYWOOD has a bite and a fervor to it that other books with blander approaches have missed. What a quirky selection of movies he calls the "Great Crime Films" It's a strange classification anyhow, for what links THE GODFATHER to PSYCHO--yes, both of them have killings in them, but other than that they're here because the author, Max Decharne, has a thing for them.

He doesn't bring that much new to the table in his chapters on those two films, but dig a little closer and you'll find some interesting commentary on films by Val Guest, Mike Hodges, and John Boorman. Yes, three British directors whose work in the noir field is often slighted. But for Decharne, HELL IS A CITY, GET CARTER and POINT BLANK rank right up there with THE BIG SLEEP and KISS ME, DEADLY, and as he explains it, his reasons are often cogent. And the gossip he gives is fascinating. I particularly enjoyed hearing about the career of Ted Lewis, the man who wrote the novel on which GET CARTER (the Michael Caine version, not the Sylvester Stallone version) was based.

Decharne always has a sly kind of wit which produces a chuckle every page or so--no bellylaughs, just one brief "ha" and then another.

Film fans with an affinity for crime films and a host of such viewing under their belts won't want to miss Max Decharne's studious Hardboiled Hollywood, a studied behind-the-scenes examination of the real-world origins of these tales. Real life crimes were often considered too brutal to turn into films, so Hollywood modified the stories for screen and sensitive audiences, creating fictional couples, classic good/evil confrontations, and embellishments which went beyond reality. Decharne's guide provides a change to compare actual sources with finished film results and is a 'must' for avid viewers.