SOURCE: Mayer, Geoff. “A Hard-Boiled World: Goodbye Paradise and The Empty Beach.” Literature/Film Quarterly 21, no. 2 (1993): 112-19.

In the following essay, Mayer discusses film adaptations of Raymond Chandler's works, commenting on ways in which Chandler's style becomes altered in the screen realizations of his novels.

In anything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, … and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. … He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.¹

This passage from Raymond...