Looking through the Big Screen: Analyzing the Adaptation of Chandler’s The Big Sleep

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the cinematographic adaptation of the novel The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, and define whether the movie succeeded as a translation of the book or it failed as a flawed adaptation. The study will employ the adaptation theory and will try to explain the selection and re-construction of the scenes taken from the novel and transformed into celluloid. It will focus on Chandler’s values, traced in the book, and the consequent translation of them into the homonym movie. An historical introduction will describe the life of Raymond Chandler and the arising of the hard-boiled genre from the birth of crime fiction and detective novel, in order to obtain a better understanding of Chandler’s writing and his realization of the though private detective formula. In the second chapter, a preface will outline an overview regarding the intersemiotic translation along with the assumptions to classify novel-based films. It will be followed by the analysis of the novel in relation with the plot, the characters and the dialogues, and the way they are reflected into the movie. In conclusion, the dissertation tries to provide a contribution in the field of adaptation, offering a point of view on Chandler’s highest literary achievement and its adapting into a film noir. In the process, it considers screenwriters and director’s choices in recreating the novel, the type of translation that has been operated by them – if literal, traditional or radical – what is preserved or lost regarding Chandler’s core ideas, and whether the movie The Big Sleep does succeed as an adaptation and reaches some artistical value.