Hammett (1982)
Universal / Studio Canal DVD (region 1, 2, 4)
d. Wim Wenders; pr. Ronald Colby, Don Guest, Fred Roos; scr. Dennis O'Flaherty, Ross Thomas; novel. Joe Gores; ph. Joseph Biroc; m. John Barry; ed. Janice Hampton, Marc Laub, Robert Q. Lovett, Randy Roberts; cast. Frederic Forrest, Marilu Henner, Peter Boyle, Elisha Cook Jr., Roy Kinnear, Lydia Lei, RG Armstrong, David Patrick Kelly, Jack Nance, Royal Dano, Samuel Fuller (97 mins)
In 1982 when producer Francis Coppola launched the films intended to promote his new studio, Zoetrope, Hammett was one of the more high-profile and anticipated works.
Zoetrope was intended to rival the Hollywood major-studio system and Coppola and his partners had duly assembled a vast array of talent around it, including a number of European filmmakers whose critically-acclaimed works were not considered to be viable Hollywood money-earners. Coppola reckoned that the quality of their work for him would translate into better films for discerning audiences and correspondingly prove financially viable. Had he not risked and lost it all on his own immense failure, One from the Heart, perhaps the eventual outcome would have been different. Coppola was particularly fond of a German director, Wim Wenders, who was greatly influenced by American film models, having then recently made the aptly titled An American Friend. Coppola invited Wenders to the USA to make his first genuine American movie, a film noir tribute from a praised novel inspired by the life of the well-regarded author Dashiell Hammett. Wenders agreed, but the filmmaking process was repeatedly interrupted by Coppola who eventually had final cut although Wenders gets full directorial credit. Despite a generally favourable reaction from many critics, the film, like all Zoetrope efforts released in that initial launch, failed to find a receptive audience.
The film concerns a fictionalized detective story revolving around the very real detective and author Dashiell Hammett.
Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain amongst others, was one of the so-called “hardboiled” detective writers whose crime novels and stories would be influential forces on the developing “film noir” approach of the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, the film John Huston made of Hammett’s novel The Maltese Falcon would be credited as the movie that defined film noir. Hammett’s character, the gumshoe Sam Spade, would become one of the best loved of American fictional detectives. The movie Hammett depicts the author (Frederic Forrest) in San Francisco circa 1928 trying to make a living as a crime writer. One day he is visited by an old friend (Peter Boyle), the possible mentoring influence behind much of Hammett’s writing, who asks him to do a little detective work much as he had been taught to do by Boyle many years before. Hammett takes on the case, to find a missing Chinese girl, and in the process uncovers a slavery and prostitution racket that extends further than he anticipated until he is immersed in a world of sexual exploitation, amorality and betrayal. Some of the incidents in the movie are inspired from Hammett’s own writings but the film is a clever fictionalization of what may have brought this highly regarded American author to write as well and as influentially as he did.
The film of Hammett is a highly stylized tribute to the man and the style he helped create. Although looser than 1940s film noir narratives and with decidedly more human warmth, it is a triumphantly visualized story, rich in entrapment motifs and with a colourful interpretation of noir aesthetics.
Many characters call Hammett by the name Sam as director Wenders seeks to carefully explore how the real Hammett and his fictional alter ego merge into the hybrid character depicted on the screen. Accordingly, the film is wholly fascinated with the interplay of fact and fiction and is punctuated by fantasy sequences visualizing Hammett’s imagination as rooted in the actual events that unfold earlier on screen: fact and fiction as a kind of inter-related system of consequence (epitomized in the discovery and cause-and-effect narrative structure of the detective story format). It is thus a film very much about the creative process as much as it is a film noir mystery. Zoetrope regular Forrest carries the warm vulnerability within the hardboiled tough guy experience: he is a man who cares and it is heartening to him to discover what he does, although he takes it with the cynicism of a true film noir tough guy. Wenders thus makes much of Forrest’s wry smile as a means of the character’s triumph over circumstance through his sense of irony and an indication of the moral distance this permits from those circumstances: irony is a means of self-preservation.
Particularly varied in its supporting characters, the film assesses the consequences of the detective’s moral code, always a standard that removes him from the surrounding corruption.
Hammett has his priorities and when he discovers his house is ransacked, he goes straight to his typewriter, making sure that that at least will survive. The writer and the detective are thus inter-related personas and in Forrest find their perfect alliance: thus – in the fiction, Hammett the writer can have Spade reach the kind of moral reckoning that Hammett the man too must eventually pass, and so fiction becomes a way in which to make sense of, even compromise with, if not exactly make peace with, an amoral world – it is an inevitable moral consequence of the reckoning with human nature that unfolds through plot. For Hammett it is a necessary form of self-expression and a realization of the struggle for control inherent in any search for the truth amidst a convoluted moral order. Yet, Hammett finds trusting people and never loses his humanity even though his actions strike a mutual agreement with the amoral world: there is always a moral compromise in life – such is the fate of film noir protagonists often doomed to moral failure or saved only by their profession. Tellingly thus, Hammett the writer can put away his original story and write a new, better one because he now has an added validation in the facts of Hammett the man’s life.
DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer is for the most part a delight, preserving the many compositional nuances in this rather delicate film noir tribute. Director Wenders is aware of film noir aesthetics and much of the film is hence a re-interpretation of that distinctive black and white form in colour as much as an homage to a pre-existing genre. The period feel is as exquisite as is the studied colour sense and, despite some frame edge problems, the transfer is functional, capturing a self-conscious Americana as assembled, interpreted and packaged through a European perspective. The use of point of view is often spectacular (especially in the shot taken from inside a typewriter looking out through the keys as the author types his work). Overhead shots are judiciously used and there is a subtle difference in colour and lighting between the real story events and Hammett’s fantasy fictionalizations which interrupt them. Set décor is exquisite, especially in scenes in the stag film makeshift studio, and the standard film noir frames-within-frames motif is self-consciously deployed. Sadly, the transfer is sometimes unclear and may seem slightly but unintentionally diffused although this does not ruin the movie as, overall, the true care that went into the film’s visual design is evident and Wenders’ insistence on using cinematographer Joseph Biroc (a major film noir figure) is fully justified.
Sound
The sound transfer is also a rather nuanced and delicate affair, nicely filled out in Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo, favouring subtlety over jarring effects and featuring a light, jazz-bluesy score that is well suited to both the evocation of period and the yearning-but-melancholy mix of hopefulness and resignation that Wenders intends. Voices are crisp and the attention to otherwise throwaway details is often startling (although would have been even better with a full home theatre transfer). Indeed, these voices are often remarkably delicate in tone and are often even tender, nicely playing off one another. There is a dreamlike flow to the aural design, with some notably clever sound effects – such as a moment wherein footsteps are neatly mixed into the striking of piano keys. This adds considerably to the film as an almost purely aesthetic exercise – indeed, for many critics, the film was far more rewarding as a style piece than as a dramatic entertainment. Background ambience is layered when needed and there is often the busy sense of the outside world through which Hammett is drawn to move. Despite its overall cohesiveness, the transfer feels centred and may strain for spatial effects. However, there is no hiss or distortion and voices especially have considerable depth as the transfer is engaging without being as immersing as it perhaps could have been with a whole re-master. It works well enough within its limitations.
Special Features
The only special feature is a poor-quality fullscreen theatrical trailer. Interestingly enough though, the trailer considers the film to be about “a writer who confused his life with his stories”, accurately hitting on one of the subtexts within this detective story. Hammett was released on region 4 DVD alongside several other Zoetrope releases from the same year – One from the Heart, The Outsiders and The Escape Artist – and all are a joy to see in their original aspect ratio. The DVD release of Hammett in particular makes for the rediscovery of an obscure but worthy film perhaps of more interest to so-called “film buffs”, for whom it is indeed a real treat.
