They Live by Night
Hill was already a central figure in 1970s noir of a more straightforward manner, having written the script for director Sam Peckinpah's "The Getaway" (1972), adapting a novel by pulp master Jim Thompson, as well as for two tough private eye films: an original screenplay for "Hickey &amp; Boggs" (1972) and an adaptation of a novel by Ross Macdonald, the leading literary descendant of Hammett and Chandler, for "The Drowning Pool" (1975). Some of the strongest 1970s noirs, in fact, were unwinking remakes of the classics, "neo" mostly by default: the heartbreaking "Thieves Like Us" (1974), directed by Altman from the same source as Ray's "They Live by Night", and "Farewell, My Lovely" (1975), the Chandler tale made classically as "Murder, My Sweet", remade here with Robert Mitchum in his last notable noir role. Detective series, prevalent on American television during the period, updated the hardboiled tradition in different ways, but the show conjuring the most noir tone was a horror crossover touched with shaggy, "Long Goodbye"-style humor: "" (1974–75), featuring a Chicago newspaper reporter investigating strange, usually supernatural occurrences.