few lines on Dashiell Hammett may be, I hope, significant in several respects.
Hammett is best known for his novel "The Maltese Falcon," which was made into a film, in Italian: "The mystery of the hawk," 1941, directed by John Huston and starring as main actors Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor, the cast but I personally am pleased to recall Peter Lorre, actor already beloved by the great Fritz Lang in Germany
is commonly understood that Hammett descend the Hard-Boileid School , the brood, in short, tough private investigators in the sense of literary dignity is certainly so, but the historical stories of violence, taken from the road, had already landed, though still with style comics, magazines already very popular in the '20s in America, to be defined soon pulp magazines, journals for which Hammett had reasonable exercise once they leave the Pinkerton agency historic investigations.
Hammett wrote well. And he proved it in a small number of works, among which those with a star employee, a person of middle age without physical attractiveness, the Continental, all too clear reference to his previous experience in the branch. But with "The Thin Man " (as in Italian) introduced on scenes, including two films starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, a pair of brilliant spouses, despite their investigators.
Much could be said, the more I think, the author Hammett, who wanted to dedicate a specific tribute worthy of his first rival, that he was the inventor Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe, private eye for excellence, but would like to make further comments.
advance that it seems a worthy representative, although he himself must be a self-made man, the other America, that America not practice the blind and fanatical cult of individual success at any cost, as a harbinger of that great country of each more sinister conservatism, if not worse. was forced by bitter circumstances of life to work in the employ of Pinkerton, who bribed his time specializing in the violent repression of strikes, which probably was not involved, but had yet to know. At the front in World War contracted tuberculosis, which started almost certainly alcoholism. He went to volunteer in the War and entrusted the drafting of a paper army. He was a victim of McCarthyism just when he had managed to break free from that vice. Ironically it is buried, in quanto veterano di due guerre , al cimitero nazionale di Arlington.
Fu compagno di vita di Lillian Hellman , l'autrice di "Piccole volpi", che tornò per gli ultimi anni prima della morte, avvenuta nel 1961, a soccorrerlo ormai povero, perché spogliato per rappresaglia dal fisco, e che credo sia stata l'erede della maggior parte dei suoi diritti letterari. Lego a questa tormentata storia d'amore la sottolineatura di un bel film del 1977 di Fred Zinnemann, "Giulia", basato sul romanzo "Pentimento", appunto della Hellman, dove la protagonista (Played by Vanessa Redgrave), friend Lillian (Jane Fonda), is consciously intended, despite the attempt to deter even Hammett (a magnificent Jason Robard, physically very similar), to disappear Nazi hell.
Gore Vidal wrote the novel noir "Hammett," in which Dashiell, not yet established author, lives in hardship and danger. Others, I think, have ventured to write about him. An Italian novelist makes even a short story in a cross Hammett, still employed by the Pinkerton, with that Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle on the brink of the precipice of his tragic fate. The latter, a great silent film comedian (a few months ago I went on Youtube to see how good he was), had been accused of a terrible crime of a sexual nature, when perhaps it was instead of peritonitis, but, despite the acquittal, was ostracized, and ending in a few years, as claimed Buster Keaton, his only true friend, to die of a broken heart.
To read today there is sometimes the Hammett spend time regarding the plots, but the strength of his literary innovations, per non dire della sua pura classe, rimane a mio avviso intatta. Ci ha lasciato anche, a guardare bene, u n vasto affresco storico della vita sociale e della civiltà materiale dell'America degli anni '20 e '30 : vorrei solo fare l'esempio del proibizionismo e dell'immigrazione clandestina dal Messico, già esistente all'epoca . E' stato anche un attento osservatore di uomini, quasi un forgiatore di aforismi. E' appena stato pubblicato in Italia, insieme ad altri, l'ultimo suo racconto, incompiuto, "Tulip": il narratore, anonimo, ma scrittore affermato prima di finire in galera per un reato non precisato, descrive la difesa della propria libertà creativa da anni di insistenze, inascoltate ed eluse, di questo strano Tulip che pretende di imporgli almeno una certa storia personale.