As a whodunnit and espionage thriller, neither version holds up all that well-especially not when compared to similar examples from around the same era, namely Casablanca, The Third Man, and any number of Hitchcock titles-but they each distinguish themselves through their close and sympathetic depiction of PTSD, still a deeply misunderstood condition at the time. Wallace’s film takes a few liberties with Hughes’s story-the nature of the central McGuffin is altered, a character’s homosexuality is dropped, and many extraneous scenes of investigation and exposition (which do, unfortunately, make the novel something of a slog) are wisely excised-but for the most part, its hues closely to what happens in the book. Like the novel, the film, directed by Richard Wallace and written by Warren Duff, sees a former POW of the Spanish Civil War (John Garfield) return to his native New York in order to avenge the murder of his childhood best friend, who he believes was killed because he helped him escape captivity. Of all three features, The Fallen Sparrow is by far the most faithful to its source. Her work had been brought to the big screen twice by that point, first by way of 1943’s The Fallen Sparrow (adapted from her novel of the same name from one-year prior), and then 1947’s Ride the Pink Horse (ditto). Hughes-who passed away 30 years ago this May-penned In a Lonely Place in 1947, she had already published 10 mystery novels prior, and Rays film was not her first spin on the Hollywood carousel. In fact, when it comes to the original novel, Ray (who rewrote most of the script, officially credited to Edmund North and Andrew Solt, as shooting commenced) may as well have throttled it and left its corpse by the side of the road.īy the time Dorothy B. For while In a Lonely Place is an undeniable masterpiece-arguably the greatest of all films noirs-as adaptations go, it’s one of the least faithful ever made.

This scene is one of several meta-layers that helps set In a Lonely Place apart from other LA-set noirs, with Dix’s casual disregard for the book he’s tasked to translate to screen mirroring that of director Ray’s.

Little white lies book series