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,
The Razor's Edge (1946 film) The Razor's Edge (1946 film) The Razor's Edge is the first film version of W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel of the same name. It was released in 1946, and stars Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb, and Herbert Marshall, with a supporting cast including Lucile Watson, Frank Latimore, and Elsa Lanchester. Marshall plays Somerset Maugham. The film was directed by Edmund Goulding. "The Razor's Edge" tells the story of Larry Darrell, an American pilot traumatized by his experiences in World War I, who sets off in search of some transcendent meaning in his life. The story