Roles of Women in Mystery & Suspense Film & Fiction

Universal produced The Mystery of Edwin Drood The story was remade again in Universal, known mostly for its long list of classic horror films, also created perhaps the first supernatural horror-whodunit hybrid with Night Monster American author Mary Roberts Rinehart — , is credited with inventing the " Had-I-But-Known " school of mystery writing as well as the phrase, "The butler did it". Another movie based on a play, The Cat and the Canary , pioneered the "comedy-mystery" genre. Remade several times, including a version with Bob Hope released in Undoubtedly the most famous of the amateur detectives to appear on the silver screen is the archetypal Sherlock Holmes.

Since Holmes has been portrayed by a multitude of actors in over films. Perhaps the earliest detective comedy is Buster Keaton 's Sherlock Jr. Together they made 14 films between and The first two, at 20th Century Fox , were period piece mysteries set in the late- Victorian era of the original stories. By the third film, Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror , now taken up by Universal Studios , Holmes was updated to the present day.

The crime novelist Dorothy L. Sayers created the archetypal British aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey in Doubleday's The Crime Club imprint published a variety of mystery novels that also inspired a radio show.

Universal Pictures struck a deal to produce a series of 11 Crime Club mystery films released from to To date, 32 films and dozens of television adaptations have been made based on Christie's novels. British private detective and adventurer Bulldog Drummond was featured in 24 films from to and was one of the prototypes for Ian Fleming 's James Bond character. A few silent Charlie Chan films, now lost, were produced in the s.

Starting in , the B-picture unit at Fox Film Corporation later part of 20th Century Fox began a series of 28 commercially successful Charlie Chan films. Monogram Pictures continued the series from to with 17 more entries.

The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson review – inside the mind of Patricia Highsmith

Moto in 8 films from to Monogram responded by creating their own gentlemanly Oriental detective, Mr. Wong, adapted from a Hugh Wiley story. Wong, Detective , Boris Karloff played Wong in 5 of 6 films produced from to Over at Warner Brothers studios, the Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner were faithfully adapted into a series of six films from to Most of these placed the crusading attorney in a standard murder mystery whodunit story. Starting with Smart Blonde , Glenda Farrell played the brassy, mystery-solving news reporter in 8 of 9 films made between and Another novel film is When Were You Born with Chinese actress Anna May Wong as an astrologer who helps solve a murder using her star-gazing talents.

Edna May Oliver played Withers, a schoolteacher with a yen for sleuthing who becomes involved with a police inspector. The last film was released in The Philo Vance detective novels by S. Van Dine inspired 15 feature films released from to Initially made as a silent movie, it was converted into a talkie halfway through production. Co-star Louise Brooks was blacklisted by Paramount Pictures after famously refusing to return to Hollywood to dub her dialog.

Powell played the suave New York detective in the first three films. Powell returned once more for the fifth feature, the highly regarded The Kennel Murder Case produced by Warner Brothers.

Powell then landed his signature role playing the equally debonair Nick Charles opposite Myrna Loy as his carefree wife "Nora" in the Thin Man series. Six films in all were produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from to Based on The Thin Man novel by Dashiell Hammett , these were witty, sophisticated romps that combined elements of the screwball comedy film within a complex murder mystery plot.

With the suspects gathered together, the detective would dramatically announce that "The killer is in this very room! There were also a great many low-budget "old dark house" mysteries based on a standard formula a dark and stormy night, the reading of a will, secret passageways, a series of bizarre murders, etc. The s was the era of the elegant gentleman detective who solved drawing-room whodunit murders using his wits rather than his fists.

Most were well-to-do amateur sleuths who solved crimes for their own amusement, carried no weapons, and often had quirky or eccentric personality traits. This type of crime-fighter fell out of fashion in the s as a new breed of tough, hardboiled professional private detectives based on the novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and an ensuing slew of imitators were adapted to film. With the onset of World War II , crime films and melodramas in particular suddenly took on a dark mood of cynicism and despair that had not existed in the optimistic s. Eventually, this cycle of films which cuts across several genres would be called film noir by French film critics.

Pessimistic, unheroic stories about greed, lust, and cruelty became central to the mystery genre. Grim, violent films featuring cynical, trenchcoat-wearing private detectives who were almost as ruthless as the criminals they pursued became the industry standard. The wealthy, aristocratic sleuth of the previous decade was replaced by the rough-edged, working-class gumshoe.

Lady in the Lake , from the Raymond Chandler novel, starred Robert Montgomery , who also directed. This film was filmed entirely from Marlowe's viewpoint. The audience sees only what he does. Montgomery only appears on camera a few times, once in a mirror reflection. The Glass Key , also starring Ladd, was the second film adaptation of Hammett's novel. Another standout film of this period is Out of the Past starring Robert Mitchum , who would go on to play Philip Marlowe three decades later. Otto Preminger 's Laura is also a classic murder mystery featuring Dana Andrews as a lone-wolf police detective.

Columbia produced a serial, Chick Carter, Detective The lead character was changed to Nick Carter's son as the studio could not afford the rights to produce a Nick Carter serial. The popular radio show The Whistler was turned into a series of 8 mystery films from to Richard Dix would introduce the stories and alternate between playing a hero, a villain, or a victim of circumstance. In Mysterious Intruder , he was a private eye. It was one of the few series to gain acceptance with the public and critics alike. Another radio drama, I Love a Mystery — , about a private detective agency, inspired three films starring Jim Bannon.

Chester Morris played Boston Blackie , a former jewel thief turned detective, in fourteen films from to Columbia also turned the Crime Doctor radio show into a series of mystery films starring Warner Baxter. Most of them followed the standard whodunit formula. Ten features were produced beginning with Crime Doctor in and ending with Crime Doctor's Diary Another popular series featured George Sanders as the suave Falcon.

Sixteen films were made from to Sanders decided to leave the series during the fourth entry, The Falcon's Brother. His character was killed off and replaced by Sanders' real-life brother, Tom Conway. Brett Halliday 's " Michael Shayne " detective novels were made into a series of 12 B-movies between and starring Lloyd Nolan and later Hugh Beaumont. Spillane even played Hammer once in the film The Girl Hunters. With Spellbound , director Alfred Hitchcock created an early psychological mystery thriller. This film, along with Fear in the Night , explores the effects of amnesia , hypnosis , and psychoanalysis.

Both films also feature surreal dream sequences which are essential to the plot. A frequently used variation on the theme involved an average person who is suddenly forced to turn ad hoc detective in order to solve the murder of a friend or clear their own name. Perhaps the last word in this subgenre is D. This film was remade in as Color Me Dead and again as D. Also among this group, the issue of racism as motive for murder is central to Crossfire , Bad Day at Black Rock , and A Soldier's Story Agatha Christie's novel Ten Little Indians , originally Ten Little Niggers , later changed again to And Then There Were None presented the concept of a mysterious killer preying on a group of strangers trapped at an isolated location in this case, Indian Island.

Three more film versions, all titled Ten Little Indians , were released in , , and along with the Russian film Desyat Negrityat. This premise has been used countless times, especially in "old dark house" genre horror films. The s and s saw a neo-noir resurgence of the hardboiled detective film and gritty police drama , based on the classic films of the past. These fall into three basic categories: Craig Stevens reprised his role as suave private eye Peter Gunn in Gunn , a sixties-mod update of his atmospheric, film noir Peter Gunn TV series — Both films were produced in the extravagant style of a James Bond espionage yarn.

The early films of Brian De Palma include the slasher comedy Murder a la Mod , the Hitchcock-inspired Sisters , and Obsession , a remake of Hitchcock's classic Vertigo. The many period films set in the s and s are led by Roman Polanski 's classic Chinatown starring Jack Nicholson and its belated sequel, The Two Jakes , which Nicholson also directed. Robert Mitchum played Marlowe for the first time in Farewell, My Lovely , perhaps the most faithful adaptation of this often-filmed book.

The obscure Chandler is set in the s but has nothing to do with Raymond Chandler's writings. And the television film Who Is the Black Dahlia? Agatha Christie's elegant Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile were colorful, lavish productions rich in s period detail. Earlier, a series of lighthearted Miss Marple mysteries were loosely adapted from Christie's novels.

Sigmund Freud himself cures Holmes of his drug addiction. And two films, A Study in Terror and Murder by Decree , which includes scenes of lurid gore, put Holmes in pursuit of the mysterious real-life serial murderer Jack the Ripper. The definitive and most faithful adaptation of the original stories was done by the British TV series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett as Holmes and David Burke as Watson, in 41 episodes which ran from Later Holmes films are often inventions that have little or nothing to do with the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories, such as Young Sherlock Holmes , produced by Steven Spielberg 's Amblin Entertainment , which puts the teenage sleuth in an action-adventure story replete with computer-generated special effects.

The reinvention of Holmes has continued as evidenced by the revamped, big-budget Warner Bros.

In Sherlock Holmes and Sherlock Holmes: The New Wave of modern detective films may well begin with Jean-Luc Godard 's offbeat Alphaville with its traditional, raincoat-and-fedora private eye placed in a futuristic, science fiction-based story. The film is part homage, part parody of the detective genre. Godard followed this with Made in U. Frank Sinatra is a cynical, Bogart-like gumshoe in Tony Rome and its sequel Lady in Cement — and a tough police investigator in The Detective George Peppard is a traditional private detective in P.

The blaxploitation B-movie industry adopted the standard private detective format for several action-mysteries such as Trouble Man , Black Eye , Sheba, Baby starring Pam Grier , and Velvet Smooth Brick , written and directed by Rian Johnson , is a unique homage bordering on parody which brings the terse, slang-filled dialog of Raymond Chandler to a modern-day California high school where a teenage sleuth investigates a murder connected to a drug ring.

Dirty Harry , and The French Connection both The Parallax View is the first murder mystery structured around political assassinations and high-level conspiracies in America. In the s amnesia stories had a resurgence in the mystery-thriller genre. How did your interest in these overlooked mystery writers begin? There seemed to be this third path. That essay was the germ for Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives. Did readers or critics recognize these authors as experimental or groundbreaking in their day? How did you decide on which works would be anthologized in Women Crime Writers?

Charlotte Armstrong we knew had to be in there. We talked about a few of her books, like A Dram of Poison , since it had won the Edgar, but Mischief had a better anchoring with what was going on in society at the time. The Highsmith was a late addition.

American Noir of the s , so The Blunderer provided good continuity. Who were some of the other writers you considered? She wrote domestic suspense, mainstream fiction, historical fiction, detective books, all sorts, but I really liked A Gentle Murderer because it had a dose of horror and religion—she was a Catholic.

Another author I was stumping for was Nedra Tyre. Tyre was a social worker from the South, so she really knew what made people tick. She has a novel from the fifties called Death of an Intruder , which I think of as a passive aggressive battle of the wits between two spinsters. The opening is just two women sitting at a table, telling each other to pass the salt, one passes the salt and the other is like, Maybe this is the day when I finally kill her.

She was so cold! More than just a great story, what were you looking for when you chose these novels?

We still have so many of the same fears about marriage, motherhood, even being alone in the house, being an outsider, not fitting in, and these books represent that incredibly well. These authors tapped that vein. Crime fiction as literature in the best possible way. The femme fatale is the other. They were evaluating woman as an object. Did Hammett understand women? I just felt she held the key to everything. Assistants often know all and yet they are overlooked and neglected and disrespected.

But Hammett knew enough, I suppose, to have Effie in that critical end-scene chastising Spade. One of the threads of the anthologies is how, beneath a conventional exterior, the women are decidedly unconventional. Was this quality appreciated in their day, or is it only now that we appreciate how bold and stereotype-breaking they are? The word I would see a lot in reviews of the time was clever , and I think those qualities were appreciated, in part.

These books were written between first- and second-wave feminism, and they all touch on, in some form, gender roles at the time. Do you consider them political books, to some extent? I think she was just a tellingly good social observer. Laura was overtly political for sure. Caspary was trying to make a point about women and independence and how men viewed them, with derision or condescension or on a pedestal, when the real person was ignored.

Do you think there is an element of literary criticism within the books? How could it not? But remember that Hughes was also a critic and often admired many male crime writers. Everything coalesced in All those writers were reckoning with postwar stuff in different ways. I think of an alternate universe where In a Lonely Place became wildly popular and I, the Jury did not, but it makes perfect sense that Spillane became the more popular one. What does Mike Hammer do? Whereas In a Lonely Place , on the other hand, is the antithesis of that.