The influences behind Blade Runner

1982

Blade Runner

Film by Ridley Scott

1980s Hollywood. United States. In English.

Ridley Scott's 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novel follows Rick Deckard, an ex-cop hired to hunt down four escaped replicants in a rain-soaked Los Angeles of 2019. It joins the hardboiled detective film to the old story of the made creature who confronts its maker.

Where it came from

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1946

The Big Sleep

Film by Howard Hawks

Classical Hollywood film noir. United States. In English.

Humphrey Bogart plays Philip Marlowe, hired by a dying general to deal with a blackmailer and drawn into the affairs of his two daughters. Its shadowed sets and laconic hero helped define film noir.

What it handed down

To Blade Runner (1982)

Stylistic influence, probable.

Blade Runner wraps its science fiction in 1940s detective-film conventions: a weary investigator, a femme fatale in padded shoulders and rolled hair, and venetian-blind shadows in smoky rooms. Rachael's first scene in Tyrell's office plays like a client interview in a Marlowe picture. The theatrical cut's voiceover imitates the hardboiled detective's narration.

Where it came from

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler 1939

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1939

The Big Sleep

Raymond Chandler

Hardboiled crime fiction. United States. Written in English.

Chandler's first novel: Los Angeles private eye Philip Marlowe, hired by General Sternwood, works through blackmail, pornography and murder in the narrator's wisecracking first person.

What it handed down

To The Big Sleep (1946)

Direct source, well documented.

Hawks's film, scripted by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, adapts Chandler's novel scene by scene. It keeps Marlowe's interviews with General Sternwood in the hothouse and much of Chandler's dialogue.

Where it came from

The Maltese Falcon, Dashiell Hammett 1930
Le Morte d'Arthur, Thomas Malory 1485 (completed c. 1470) follow this thread

Find “The Big Sleep” on Amazon

1930

The Maltese Falcon

Dashiell Hammett

Hardboiled crime fiction. United States. Written in English.

San Francisco detective Sam Spade deals with killers chasing a jeweled statuette. A model for the hard, terse American detective novel.

What it handed down

To The Big Sleep (1939)

Stylistic influence, well documented.

Chandler learned his trade in Black Mask, the pulp magazine Hammett had made famous, and in 'The Simple Art of Murder' credited Hammett with giving 'murder back to the kind of people that commit it'. Marlowe's toughness and the clipped dialogue follow Hammett's Sam Spade.

Where it came from

The line stops here: hammett drew on his years as a Pinkerton operative and the pulp magazine Black Mask rather than on identifiable literary models.

Find “The Maltese Falcon” on Amazon

Where it came from

What it handed down

To Blade Runner (1982)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Big Sleep (1946)

Where it came from

What it handed down

To The Big Sleep (1939)

Where it came from

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