As early
as the 1920s, motion pictures had an strong influence on novelists and short story writers. Some
of s stories are like movieswhich explains why so many were adapted to movies. The same was true
for Dashiell Hammett, who wrote in an objective way and relied heavily on dialogue to convey .
His novel The Maltese Falcon was made into movies three times. When a movie
opensthat is, when the camera "fades in"there is usually no explanation of the
problem, the setting, or anything else. There may be a so-called establishing shot. For
instance, if the story takes place in Paris you will see the Eiffel Tower and know you are in
Paris. If it takes place in New York you are likely to see a lot of skyscrapers. Movies usually
can only show people doing things in outdoor or indoor settings and talking to each other. The
viewer has to pick up information from the actors dialogue. Sometimes there is a
"voice-over" narrator, which is equivalent to prose exposition in a story; but movie
makers do not like voice-over narrators. "" opens with the equivalent of an
"establishing shot":
The hills across the valley of the
Ebro were long and white. On this side there was no shade and no trees and the station was
between two lines of rails in the sun.
This is description, not
exposition. Hemingway tried to avoid straight prose exposition because it makes the author
intrusive and at the same time distances the reader from the characters.
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