The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep are often considered the two greatest acheivements of detective noir prior to the post-war era. It's by no means incidental to their reputation that both starred the pitch-perfect Humphrey Bogart, nor that in both films, he portrayed a classic private eye created by one of the standout pulp witers of the previous decade. Though both have been rescued from dime-novel oblivion by later critics who were able to pick out their substantial literary talents from the low-level hackwork that comprised much of 1930s pulp, Raymond Chandler's reputation has outstripped Dashiell Hammett's, and rightfully so; Hammett was an outstanding technician and a keen drawer of character, but he lacked Chandler's transcendent style, his keen psychological insight, and his stunning sense of place and time. Still, he shared with Philip Marlowe's creator a love of language, and he was by far Chandler's superior in terms of complex, inventive plot, which made his books natural fodder for movie adaptations.
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