In the middle '20's, Dashiell Hammett (best known as authro of "The Maltese Falcon") wrote two unrelated novels, "The Glass Key", about Ned Beaumont an alcoholic gambler who uses duplicity to save his mob boss from taking a murder rap for a corrupt politician (all thw while fending off a rival mobster), and 'Red Harvest", in which a nameless private eye (also alcoholic, a status shared by many Hammett heroes) is hired to clean up a small town kept in fear by two warring boot-leg mobs.
I believe "Red Harvest" did make it to film in the '30's, but I haven't been able to track that down and never saw it. "The Glass Key" was first made into a (not too successful) film in 1935, and then re-made in 1942. The remake concerns us here. Directed by Stuart Heisler in a style that compounds the typical crime film briskness of the '30's with the shaded undertones of the then developing 'noir' genre, it is actually quite a good film, and in a number of ways daring for its period. True to the novel, literally everyone in the film is corrupt in some way, and especially fascinating is the appearance of William Bendix in a minor role of an overtly homosexual sadist of a thug. Alan Ladd plays Ned Beaumont as a true anti-hero, cold, calculating, true to no ethic but his own - a type Hollywood at that time was having problems presenting, since the strong ethics of the character undercut all the assumptions of sociopathy of such types popular at the time. The film finally betrays itself with a "kiss-and-make-up" final scene that completely undercuts the ethical problematic of the novel (in which Beaumont finally betrays his boss by running off with the boss' fiancee). But until then, the movie moves towards its dark "who-dun-it" revelation rapidly and filled with tension.
There is a scene dead center in "The Glass Key" where Beaumont is captured by the rival mob boss and tortured by the sadistic thug (which is from the novel), and filled with Freudian undertones due to the homosexuality of the torturing thug (Bendix) (also implicit in the novel). I think it was Japanese cinema expert Donald Ritchie from whom I remember an anecdote that it was this scene that fascinated Akira Kurosawa to such an extent that he felt compelled to make a film based on a Hammett novel. Interestingly, he did not do a remake of "The Glass Key", however. Instead, he transposed "Red Harvest" to the Japan of the civil wars of the 1860's, rewriting the nameless private eye as an equally nameless wandering samurai played (played with exquisite panache by Toshiro Mifuni), while at the same time parodying the typical *chambara* (swordfight film) popular in Japan. I refer of course to "Yojombo" (1962). Nonetheless, the the torture sequence is lifted from "The Glass Key" and interjected as a pivotal scene in "Yojimbo". A couple of subtractions and additions need be noted here: Kurosawa strips the Freudian subtext out of the torture sequence completely, so that the torture becomes a study in the what Hannah Arendt referred to as the "banality" of evil" - the torturers are just doing a job. This fits neatly with the critique of capitalism implicit in the film, and which is equally implicit in the Hammett original, so the loss of Freudian content goes by unnoticed.
On the other hand, Kurosawa and Mifune add an earthiness to the nameless hero lacking in Hammett's tension filled original: Mifune's samurai is always scratching, eating, cringing or sneering. Perhaps this is to make up for the subtraction of the element of alcoholism that was the chief weakness of Hammett's anti-hero. But it also has the effect of rounding out the character so that he becomes human to us in a way Hammett's anti-hero is not.
In 1965, a fledgling Italian director, Sergio Leone, was hired to do a typical "spaghetti western" of the era. Instead, hje remade 'Yojimbo" (without giving credit to the original, by the way) as "A Fistful of Dollars". The failure to credit "Yojimbo" as inspiration raises some ethical questions - but it must be noted that Kurosawa himself made no reference to Hammett in the credits to "Yojimbo"!
In any event, "A Fistful.(...)" is a young director's film, full of flaws; but it has an undeniable black-humor and is crisply directed, with some striking visuals that seem to come out of nowhere, given the genre context in which the film is made. The nameless hero is played with a particular coolness by Clint Eastwood, which undercuts the earthiness- the scratching and scruffiness - that remains from the Mifune version - Eastwood's anti-hero rarely eats, and never cringes or sneers. The pivotal torture scene remains, as defined by the Kurosawa version, given a peculiar brutality by the addition of a pan of the expressionless faces of the onlooking outlaws.
Eventually we want to get to Walter Hill's 1996 remake of "Yojimbo", "Last Man Standing", but we first have to side-track into an uncredited remake of "The Glass Key", the Coen Brothers' 1991 "Miller's Crossing'. This is in a number of ways an astounding film, (certainly one of the Copen Brothers' most tightly knit, narratively), full of black-humorous quirks, such as the marvelous set-piece of Albert Finney as the crime boss turning tables with a tommy-gun on would-be assassins in a car which he calmly follows on foot until at last the car crashes and explodes, while a classic rendition of "Danny Boy" plays over the soundtrack. The Coen Brothers' also take a minor scene from the Hammett text - where Ned Beaumont drunkenly gambles away his hat and then has to go hunting for it after he sobers up - and turn it into an over-arching metaphor for the emotional emptiness the anti-hero (marvelously played by Gabriel Byrne) struggles with throughout the narrative and which Hammett left as merely implicit. They also return the ethical bleakness to the finale, without actually duplicating Hammett's - now it is the crime boss who gets the girl and the anti-hero who is left to ponder the ruin of his friendship with his former boss. It should also be noted that the Coen Bros. return the alcoholism to the anti-hero, thus further problematizing an already difficult-to-grasp character.
This actually brings us at last to Walter Hill's "Last Man Standing", since the nameless anti-hero by now is a raging alcoholic who has a whiskey glass or beer bottle in his hand half the time he's on screen. Continuing the bizarre history of plagiarism and mis-crediting that surrounds these films, "Last Man Standing" is openly credited to Kurosawa's "Yojimbo" . Unfortunately, Hill isn't re-making "Yojimbo", he's remaking Leone's "Fistful of Dollars" (!), including Leone's additions and subtractions to the "Yojimbo" story - as well as adding touches of his own, such as a scene of a visit to a prostitute by the anti-hero (well played by Bruce Willis in what may be his best starring performance) that not only exhibits the character's unfailing preparedness for violence (he is attacked while copulating and without hesitation grabs his guns and kills the attackers) but also in the long run reveals his uncharacteristic sympathy for women (he finally bails the prostitute out of jail and pays for her bus-fare out of town). This becomes the explanatory "weak-link" that finally brings him to ruin (as Bruce Dern's corrupt sherriff remarks, "when you go down it'll be over a skirt"). Hill is an odd director; with the right cast and crew, he produces miracles; with a group of hacks he hacks with the worst of them (ala "Red Heat"). Fortunately, "Last Man Standing" has all the right crew and cast at the right time and place. Hill turns the Hammett-Kurosawa-Leone black comedy into a darkly gothic, gory gangster movie. The humorous becomes simply absurd, and the anti-hero survives, not by his wits or even by his skill with a gun, but simply because he hasn't died yet (although as he drives away, bullet in his guts, he remarks voice-over "something would turn up; it always does").
All of these films are highly recommended. They leave a trace along the history of cinema of the Modern era's attempt to find some ethos in a captialist world where all that matters is the achievement of wealth and power and the skills necessary to attain these. Both the anti-hero and his enemies are professionals, but the question recurrs: at what point does the profesional at last allow his humanity to show? in his sadism (as with the villains) or in his ethics (as with the anti-hero)? Both Hammett's texts and their various film versions wisely leave the question open, something for the audience to take home and ponder, rightly disturbed.
Rated by a 5 star code:
"The Glass Key" = ***
"Yojimbo"= *****
"Fistful of Dollars"= ***
"Miller's Crossing"= ****1/2
"Last Man Standing"= **** -E. J. Winner.
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