History of crime fiction quite complicated, forcing him to embark on an odyssey through the urban landscape. He is involved with organized crime and other lowlifes on the "mean streets" of, preferably, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, or Chicago. A hard-boiled private eye has an ambivalent attitude towards the police. It is his ambition to save America and rid it of its mean elements all by himself. As Raymond Chandler's protagonist Philip Marlowe—immortalized by actor Humphrey Bogart in the movie adaptation (1946) of the novel "The Big Sleep" (1939)—admits to his client, General Sternwood, he finds it rather tiresome, as an individualist, to
For the Term of His Natural Life (1908 film) For the Term of His Natural Life (1908 film) For the Term of His Natural Life is a 1908 Australian silent film based on the 1874 novel by the same name by Marcus Clarke. The film is an adaptation of MacMahon's stage adaptation of the novel. It was the fourth Australian feature ever made and is considered a lost film. The 1908 film was the first screen adaptation of Clarke's novel, which was also later filmed in 1911, as a silent film known as "The Life of Rufus Dawes", 1927, again as a silent film, and the most expensive produced