Tonight on TV: Clive Owen reinvents a famous American detective in France

Mr. Spadea legendary detective from the south of France

It’s a very nice return that the detective series offers Mr. Spadean original creation by Canal+ that brings the famous American detective back to life Sam Spade. This private detective created by the writer Dashiell Hammett in 1930 became famous throughout the world thanks to the novel and then the film The Maltese Falcon. In this film directed by John Huston, released in 1941, Humphrey Bogart plays him. Hat, raincoat and cigarette, the actor then creates the perfect model of the private investigator, and the film sets the main tone for what will later become the “film noir” genre.

More than 80 years later, the famous detective is back a very first appearance in a series which is dedicated to him, in the guise of Clive Owen. A six-episode miniseries, entitled Mr. Spadeand which develops the following plot:

At the beginning of the 1960s, about twenty years had passed since the events of the Maltese Falcon. Retired detective Sam Spade lives in France, in the small town of Bozouls, where he longs for peace and quiet. But the gruesome discovery of six brutally murdered nuns will catapult him into a dangerous investigation with many ramifications. Spade is far from suspecting that his past has just caught up with him.

The creator of success The Queen’s Game the controls

We find in the creation of Mr. Spade Scott Frank and Tom Fontana, two famous names in American fiction. In fact, we owe Scott Frank in particular the writing of Loganas well as creation and series production Without God AND The Queen’s Game. Tom Fontana, for his part, created and scripted the monumental series OZ (1997 – 2003) as well as the original creation of Canal+ Borgia.

Around Clive Owen, the cast is international and prestigious. For French speakers we find, among others, Denis Ménochet, Louise Bourgoin, Jonathan Zaccaï and Chiara Mastroianni. As for the English, Stanley Weber, Cara Bossom, Rebecca Root and Matthew Beard.

All these actresses and actors play characters threatened by their intimate and collective past, in a village of the 1960s where we feel the impact of the Algerian war, but also that of the Second World War and the Nazi occupationwho left traces…

A tasty change

It’s quite fascinating to discover Sam Spade, with his irony and his cynicism – but also a fragility and sadness that the detective played by Humphrey Bogart didn’t have – in this setting that couldn’t be more French. In natural landscapes as well as in external and internal decorations of Mr. Spade – whose reconstructions are very careful – created the presence of the American detective an attractive change and above all it highlights the film noir genre and the fictions to which the authors wanted to refer.

The six episodes of Mr. Spade are broadcast in 2 episodes every Monday evening, from 26 February 2024 on Canal+.

Source: Cine Serie

Ray

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