Since the 1990s, the expropriation of canonical works of cinema has been a fundamental dimension of art-film exploration. Rainer Werner Fassbinder provides an early model of open adaptation of film classics, followed ever more boldly by the Coen Brothers, Chantal Akerman, Alex Carax, Todd Haynes, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Baz Luhrmann, and Olivier Assayas. This book devotes chapters to each of these directors to examine how their films redeploy landmark precursors such as City Lights (1931), Citizen Kane (1941), Rome Open City (1945), All About Eve (1950), and Vertigo (1958) in order to probe our psychological, philosophical, and historical situations in a postmodern societe du spectacle. In broadly diverse ways, each of these directors complicates received notions of the past and its representation, while probing the transformative media evolution and dislocation of the present, in film art and in society.

Since the 1990s, the expropriation of canonical works of cinema has been a fundamental dimension of art-film exploration. Rainer Werner Fassbinder provides an early model of open adaptation of film classics, followed ever more boldly by the Coen Brothers, Chantal Akerman, Alex Carax, Todd Haynes, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Baz Luhrmann, and Olivier Assayas. This book devotes chapters to each of these directors to examine how their films redeploy landmark precursors such as City Lights (1931), Citizen Kane (1941), Rome Open City (1945), All About Eve (1950), and Vertigo (1958) in order to probe our psychological, philosophical, and historical situations in a postmodern societe du spectacle. In broadly diverse ways, each of these directors complicates received notions of the past and its representation, while probing the transformative media evolution and dislocation of the present, in film art and in society.

As the father of the hardboiled detective genre, Dashiell Hammett had a huge influence on Hollywood. Yet, it is easy to forget how adaptable Hammett's work was, fitting into a variety of genres and inspiring generations of filmmakers.
"Dashiell Hammett and the Movies" offers the first comprehensive look at Hammett's broad oeuvre and how it was adapted into films from the 1930s all the way into the 1990s. Film scholar William H. Mooney reveals the wide range of films crafted from the same Hammett novels, as when "The Maltese Falcon" was filmed first as a pre-Code sexploitation movie, then as a Bette Davis screwball comedy, and finally as the Humphrey Bogart classic. He also considers how Hammett rose to Hollywood fame not through the genre most associated with him, but through a much fizzier concoction, the witty murder mystery "The Thin Man." To demonstrate the hold Hammett still has over contemporary filmmakers, the book culminates in an examination of the Coen brothers' pastiche "Miller's Crossing."
Mooney not only provides us with an in-depth analysis of Hammett adaptations, he also chronicles how Hollywood enabled the author's own rise to stardom, complete with a celebrity romance and a carefully crafted public persona. Giving us a behind-the-scenes look at the complex power relationships, cultural contexts, and production concerns involved in bringing Hammett's work from the page to the screen, "Dashiell Hammett and the Movies" offers a fresh take on a literary titan.