Hard-Boiled! Studies of Raymond Chandler's Work on Screen

Frame grab from The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946). Read Jonathan  Rosenbaum's essay on this film adaptation of Raymond Chandler's 1939 novel.

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you the second of three posts devoted to online resources provided by the staff of the fantastic Film Studies department at Queen Mary, University of London. On this occasion, the resource is a two part video of an excellent, illustrated lecture by Adrian Wootton on the screen adaptations of Chandler's work, including ones the writer scripted himself.

This time, FSFF adds value to the videos with its own presentation of a terribly hard-boiled list of links to online scholarly studies of Raymond Chandler's work and its screen adaptations.

Raymond Chandler on Screen

On December 3rd 2009, Adrian Wootton, then Chief Executive of the BFI (now CEO of Film London), visited Queen Mary, University of London, to give a talk on Raymond Chandler on screen.

Click on the links below to access QuickTime video files of the event.

Part 1

Part 2

• Paul Bird, 'Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction as a Vehicle of Social Commentary in Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep and Walter Mosley's Devil In A Blue Dress', Journal of the Faculty of Economics, KGU, Vol.21, No.1, September 2011
• John J. Blaser and Stephanie L.M. Blaser, Film Noir Studies (dozens of essays and clips), 2008 
• 'Leigh Brackett: Journeyman Plumber', Interview by Steve Swires, in Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940s and 1950s. Edited and with an Introduction by Pat McGilligan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)
• Clara Calvo, 'Telephone Conversation in the Fiction of Raymond Chandler: Opening up Openings and Closings', Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense, 3, 1995 
• Patrick Cattrysse,'Adaptation and Screenwriting Studies: Methodological Reflections', Paper was presented at the Fourth International Screenwriting Research Conference in Brussels (8-9-10 September 2011)
• Patrick Cattrysse, 'Descriptive and normative norms in film adaptation: the Hays Office and the American film noir', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 6, n° 2-3, 1996
• John G. Cawelti, 'The gunfighter and the hard-boiled dick some ruminations on american fantasies of heroism', American Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2: Fall 1975
• Christine Coit, 'Philip Marlowe: American Detective', Explorations: An Undergraduate Research Journal, 2003
• David M. Fine, 'James M. Cain and the Los Angeles novel', American Studies, Vol. 20, No. 1: Spring 1979 
  Philippa Gates, 'A Brief History of the Detective Film', Crime Culture, 2004
• James A Goring, 'The Fictive Sense of Place: Los Angeles in Word and Image', Places, Vol. 5.2, 1988
• Catherine Grant, 'Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love', Film Studies For Free, February 21, 2011
• Kevin Jack Hagopian, 'The Big Sleep', Images, 2 [date unknown]
• Kevin Jack Hagopian, 'Double Indemnity', Images, 2 [date unknown]
• Lee Horsley, The Noir Thriller [sample chapter], (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001) Book info. here
• Lee Horsley, 'Hard-boiled investigators' [sample chapter], The Noir Thriller (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001)
• Lee Horsley, 'American Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction, 1920s-1940s', Crime Culture, 2002
• Susanne Jansson, 'Style as Experience', Nordiskestetisktidskrift, 12, 22, 2000
• Jennifer E. Langdon, Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood (New York: Columbia Univrsity Press, 2008)
• S Knight, 'Re-Formations of the Thriller: Raymond Chandler and John Le Carre', Sydney Studies in English, 2008 
• Daniel Linder, 'The Censorship of Sex: A Study of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep in Franco’s Spain', TTR : traduction, terminologie, rédaction, Volume 17, numéro 1, 1er semestre 2004, p. 155-182
• Daniel Linder, 'Translating Slang in Detective Fiction', Perspectives: Studies in Translatology, Vol 8.4, 2000 
• Fran Mason, Hollywood Detectives: Crime Series in the 1930s and 1940s from the Whodunnit to Hard-boiled Noir (Sample chapter - London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) book info
• Harold Orel, 'Raymond Chandler's Last Novel: Some Observations on the Private Eye Tradition', Journal of the Central Mississippi Valley American Studies, 1961 
• Bryan D. Palmer, 'Night in the Capitalist, Cold War City: Noir and the Cultural Politics of Darkness', Left History, 5.2, 1997
• Kriss Ravetto, 'Shaking Down L.A. Cool: Hopping Up Neo-Noir', Emergences, 9.2, 1999
• Paul Skenazy, 'The New Wild West: The Urban Mysteries of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler', Boise State University Western Writers Series, 1982 
• 'Billy Wilder, The Art of Screenwriting No. 1', Interviewed by James Linville, The Paris Review, 138, Spring 1996
• 'Billy Wilder: About Film Noir '-- an interview by Robert Porfirio, Images, 10 [date unknown]