The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
The subtle excitement & foggy-headed camera lens that made The Glass Key such an enthralling novel was for some reason traded in for cliche Hollywood romance & scattershot dialogue. The pacing of Hammett’s story was above all else the most intriguing aspect of the book, as it left gaps in the plotline for the audience to make its own judgments, only to find that what they thought they knew they actually had been duped into believing (take, for instance, the two fights between Ned & Madvig). The film adaptation is made in a way that makes it seem like the screenwriters tore out all the pages of the novel & randomly rearranged them, slapping on a paper clip & calling it a day. There is little rhyme or reason as to why Ed meets Janet so soon in the movie or why he’s “Ed” at all. The extreme close-ups of Beaumont’s eyes in the film are effected & add little to the general mystery of the story, unlike the descriptions of eyes in the novel. I don’t know, perhaps I’m being a bit unfair to the film, but I tend to get a little frustrated on Hollywood’s taking of liberties with texts. Let’s just say I’d rather grit my teeth in suspense in reading The Glass Key than laugh at the film’s ineptitudes & aloofness. Weak.