Both Dashiell Hammett's hardboiled detective novel The Maltese Falcon and Alberto Moravia's psychological novel about the disintegration of a marital relationship, Contempt (a.k.a. A Ghost at Noon), were adapted into feature films. Hammett's novel and its protagonist shamus Sam Spade were adapted by director John Huston in the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon, while Jean-Luc Godard adapted Moravia's novel for the screen in the 1963 film Contempt. In adapting one of the most popular novels of all time, Gone With The Wind, for film; legendary producer David O. Selznick maintained the audience would forgive any omissions as long as long as nothing not in the original work was invented for the film.
In "The Maltese Falcon" and "Contempt" both Huston and Godard primarily follow this rule-of-thumb and remain faithful to the original texts on which the films are based. While Huston's film illustrates the elements of the genre known as film noir, Godard's film exhibits the elements associated with French New Wave Cinema. This analysis will discuss how these films are faithfully adapted to the screen, by comparing various elements of each with the original texts on which they are based. A conclusion will address the transmission of artistic intentions through literature and film.
Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is considered a classic of detective fiction, a literary genre that shares many similarities with the film genre known as film noir. Protagonist private investigator Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer are hired by a mysterious woman, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, to find her kidnapped sister. Her story is exposed as a lie, Miles winds up dead, and the desperate and dangerous hunt for the black bird of the title is on. In detective fiction, Sam Spade represents the witty tough guy, first-person narrator characteristic of the genre. According to Leon Arden (76), Raymond Chandler developed the genre of...