From Hard-Boiled Fiction To Film Noir:Hollywood Mode Of Production,Censorship,and Postmodernism

Film noir occupies an important position in the history of American cinema,and critics have approached the subject from various perspectives.However,despite the fact that a great many films noirs were adapted from hard-boiled fiction,there are not many studies which examine these films as adaptations.In view of this,this thesis attempts to analyze these adaptations by relating them to their economic,socio-political,and cultural contexts.Specifically,the thesis focuses on the interactions between the adaptations and such contextual forces as Hollywood mode of production,censorship,and postmodernism.Instead of simply being influenced and determined by contextual forces,the adaptation of hard-boiled fictions into films noirs,as this thesis argues,is a dynamic process of negotiation,of both conformation and subversion:on the one hand,these adaptations conform to the Hollywood mode of production,to film censorship,and to postmodernism;on the other hand,the former is also able to bypass,criticize,and finally subvert the latter.This thesis focuses on three adaptations;The Big Sleep,Double Indemnity,and The Long Goodbye,all of which are classic texts of both hard-boiled fiction and film noir.The Big Sleep was made in the studio era and conformed to a mode of production characterized by the star system,the conservative use of photography technology and the studio system.As a result,the film became a star vehicle;it stuck to black and white photography in spite of the significance of color in Chandler’s novel;and finally,the director and screenwriters were allowed litter creative freedom under the studio system and were forced to follow the standards set by the studios.Double Indemnity was restrained by the dictates of film censorship then prevailing in the United States;yet by exploring the possibilities of the film art,its presentation of sexuality,family,and the American Dream,while apparently satisfying the requirements of the censors,was also able to defy censorship and tactfully get away with it.The Long Goodbye was made at a time when the American cultural landscape was dominated by postmodernism which,according to Fredric Jameson,is characterized by the prevalence of pastiche and nostalgia symptomatic of the loss of historicity,of our inability to reach the real past and fashion representations of our contemporary experience.But this adaptation succeeded in dissolving pastiche homeopathically by pushing it to its limits and nostalgia allopathically through anti-nostalgia.Consequently,the audience is shocked into the realization of and reflection on the postmodern situation they are in,thus reconquering a kind of genuine historical sense.