Devil in a Blue Dress; Silver Screen Edition.

It wouldn’t be a stretch to call Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress my favorite book we’ve read this semester. So I had a very clear image in my head as I read this book. I’m not quite sure the movie lived up to this image. The first thing I noticed was the difference in Allbright. As I read, I pictured him as a sort of classy, upright individual. Obviously he wasn’t even close to “upright” but I saw him in a veranda on the beach (Panama hat lead to this, I think) with the wind blowing and his suit all white and bright. Similar to the scene with Daisy and Jordan and the couch in The Great Gatsby. However, Allbright of the movie was dirty and, not to sound rude, but not as white as I had pictured in my head. I was disappointed in his way of speaking, and of handling himself. In the book, he came off as more confident. Even though he was working for other people, he had an air of being totally in charge and responsible to himself and the powers that be above; no  one else. In the movie, he’s less in charge and more of an asshole as opposed to the classy gangster in white that I saw in my head. This extended to the scene on the boardwalk, which I found really disappointing.

I did, however, quite like the character of Easy Rawlins. I liked the look of him, and how he did seem to know what he was doing. I loved the portrayal of his house, it really did look like something that he should have been proud of. Throughout the movie, he seemed confident and sure of himself, which was how I pictured him in the novel as well. I was disappointed in his relationship with Daphne; there was no chemistry like that of the novel. Where was the bathtub scene, or the small cottage? The small child was also gone for most of the movie, and he didn’t get the happy ending that he did in the book.

The end was not what I had wanted. I was very happy with the  ending in the novel; it gave Easy a future as a detective which threw me back to my Nancy Drew days (which wasn’t a bad thing). It also tied up a lot of strings very quickly, which produced a whirlwind of cause and effect in a very hardboiled way. There was pretty much none of that in the movie.

All in all, I really liked this novel. And I kinda liked the movie. You win some, you lose some.

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