Book vs. 3 Movie Versions: Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett

Admittedly, I was first introduced to Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett via an article salon.com ran a couple of years ago about why there has yet to be a true film adaptation of the book. It went over the history of Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone suing each other. Kurosawa’s Yojimbo came first, and if I remember correctly, it gave credit to Red Harvest as its story basis. Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars did not give credit to neither the book nor the Kurasawa film, and came out a year after Yojimbo. The article also mentioned Last Man Standing, the 1996 film by Walter Hill, and that movie credits its story to Akira Kurosawa, and it also discussed the HBO TV series Deadwood as being the closest thing to a true film adaptation.

I made the mistake of watching both films back to back a couple of years ago not too long after reading the book. Let’s get this out of the way: none of the films listed are like the book. They essentially take the most basic plot of the book and the “man with no name” idea and change everything else. In Red Harvest, a nameless Continental Operative agent from San Francisco is summoned into a mining town called Personville (nicknamed Poisonville) by town magnate Elihu Willson, whose son Donald; the local newspaper editor has been murdered. There are two gangs competing in Personville, and while Elihu wants the town to clean up, he is just as corrupt as the gangs, and is responsible for bringing one of the gangs into town to bust up a miner’s strike a few years before. Donald was publishing stories about the corruption in town, although not naming his father as part of the problem. The Op plays both gangs against each other using Elihu’s money while solving the mystery of who killed Donald Willson. While it doesn’t have as many characters as say, a James Ellroy novel, it does have at least a good two dozen or so, and it’s hard to keep up with sometimes. It is also a book of many subplots. All the films mentioned just take the plot of a nameless man playing two gangs against each other to the middle, working for one at a time using his supreme samurai or gunslinger skills and as the kids like to say, “gettin’ paid.”

All three films are essentially the same movie and hit the same notes (although in Last Man Standing’s case, not as well as the others), they are just set in different time periods, and the lead character in Yojimbo is a samurai, and in A Fistful of Dollars, the lead character is a gunslinger. The character in Last Man Standing, he was sort of a gunslinger too, although it was never quite clear what he did for a living. While I liked Yojimbo better because of its dark humor, it is probably best to watch the three films with a decent amount of time between them, perhaps one a year. At least, if you feel you should see all three movies, if not, just stick to Yojimbo, because otherwise this all becomes a very good case of why re-makes are a bad idea if you’re not going to do much to change things from the original. I felt pretty “meh” about Last Man Standing although I watched it two years after seeing the other two films. I have re-read the book recently though, since I’ve been working my way through the Library of America Dashiell Hammett anthology that features all five of his novels. Last Man Standing is the one closest to the time period where Red Harvest took place, but Christ did the scenery get chewed in that movie between David Patrick Kelly playing one creepy gang leader (hey, kind of like his role in The Warriors!), a red-haired Christopher Walken playing his gunman, the leader of the Italian gang, whose number two man was Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos, playing a slightly dumber version of Christopher Moltisanti, his character on the show. I really can’t say if Bruce Willis did a good job playing the only calm person in town. There is also a corrupt sheriff played by Bruce Dern and a loner innkeeper/barkeeper played by William Sanderson of Deadwood, Newhart, and for you exploitation fans, Fight for Your Life.

As far as the comparison that salon.com made with Deadwood, I can’t say that rings particularly true either. Deadwood doesn’t share much in common with Red Harvest, except maybe taking place in a pretty corrupt (gold) mining town. It shares the grittiness and the bloodiness of the novel, but if anything, Deadwood is grittier, bloodier, and features more developed characters (code word for better written). And perhaps the weird sense of community that the book has, which Deadwood also trumps it on. The character of Seth Bullock, a former sheriff from Montana, comes to Deadwood to start a hardware store. It is only with a good deal of reluctance and witnessing the ineptitude and corruptness of other men attempting to be sheriff does he eventually put on the badge again during the series run. While he is at first enemies with Al Swearengen, the saloon-owner who essentially built the town, they soon have to learn to work together to thwart common enemies of the changing times. Deadwood has its feet more planted in history than anything else. Bullock and Swearengen, as well as most of the characters were based on real people, although liberties have been taken for dramatic effect. Wild Bill Hickock is in the first season of the show, and Calamity Jane is in all three seasons. George Hearst is a character in the third season. Unfortunately, Deadwood was cancelled before the fourth and purportedly final season could happen, and Ian McShane, who played Al Swearengen, recently said that the sets were recently taken down, so there will be no Deadwood movie, which was rumored for a good year or so. And fun fact: Walter Hill, who directed Last Man Standing, produced Deadwood.

It could even be said that Django has elements of Red Harvest. There are certainly points during the film where it looks like it may go into the direction of “one man playing two gangs against each other”, but it veers off that direction, even if it keeps the “lone, nameless man” vibe. It really is hard to conceive why there hasn’t been a more true film version made of Red Harvest. The book itself is barely 200 pages long – if numerous people can write and make 2 hour long films from an 8-page Stephen King story and if there have been two (soon to be three) films based on James Ellroy novels that are usually over 350 pages long and feature the upwards of a 100+ characters, they can certainly adapt this book and take it past the most basic plot + saving the “kept” woman bit, which isn’t in the book at all and is completely needless in all three films. I know it’s done to show that these nameless men have a weakness for saving women, but it’s a crappy subplot any way you cut it. Red Harvest does have a female character with a sizable role in the book, Dinah Brand, but she isn’t a “kept” woman, nor is she nicey-nice. She pretty much only cares about money and makes no qualms about it – she quite possibly could partially be the basis of “the man with no name” characters in all three films.

So let’s break it down:
Read Red Harvest.
Watch Yojimbo and Deadwood.
Watch A Fistful of Dollars just because it’s more or less the first crazy Italian Western and Clint Eastwood’s breakout role.
Feel free to avoid Last Man Standing.

Next time on Book vs. 3 Movies: I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, at least if I think the new movie version starring Will Smith is worth seeing in the theaters.

PS – According to the Library of America chronology on Dashiell Hammett, the first film “loosely derived” from Red Harvest was Roadhouse Nights, which Paramount released in 1930. This film does not seem to be available on any format.

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