Raymond Chandler is "The Big Sleep" (1946), by Howard Hawks, with Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe. William Faulkner was a co-writer of the screenplay. Chandler's few screenwriting efforts and the cinematic adaptation of his novels proved stylistically and thematically influential on the American "film noir" genre. Notable for its revised take on both the Marlowe character, transplanting the novel to the 1970s, is Robert Altman's 1973 neo-noir adaptation of "The Long Goodbye". Chandler was also a perceptive critic of detective fiction; his essay "The Simple Art of Murder" is the canonical essay in the field. Raymond Chandler Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23,
Raymond Chandler Chandler's treatment of black, female, and homosexual characters, calling him a "rather nasty man at times". Anderson nevertheless praised Chandler as "probably the most lyrical of the major crime writers". Chandler's short stories and novels are evocatively written, conveying the time, place and ambiance of Los Angeles and environs in the 1930s and 1940s. The places are real, if pseudonymous: Bay City is Santa Monica, Gray Lake is Silver Lake, and Idle Valley a synthesis of wealthy San Fernando Valley communities. "Playback" is the only one of his novels not to have been cinematically adapted. Arguably the most notable adaptation