Thu 16 Nov 2023
TV Trailers I’m Watching: MONSIEUR SPADE (2024).
Posted by Steve under Movie & TV Trailers[8] Comments
I stand to be corrected on this, but this upcoming TV series, scheduled to appear on AMC+ sometime next year, takes place in early 1960s France, where PI Ssm Spade has recently retired. Until now, that is, when he’s called upon to tackle another case of murder and maybe more. I can’t tell more than that from the trailer below, but it does star Clive Owen as Sam Spade, so there is that.
November 17th, 2023 at 8:25 am
This looks like it may be worth paying for. Also, the MADAME WEB that’s advertised. Maybe 2024 will be a better year?
November 17th, 2023 at 4:46 pm
I’m a Clive Owen fan. I do think it’s odd that Brits keep getting cast as Marlowe. On the other hand as we discussed previously it’s hard to come up with a living American actor reminiscent of Cary Grant (who was Chandler’s ideal actor to play Marlowe). Perhaps George Clooney–but frankly I like the haunted and damaged quality of Owen’s face and bearing for Marlowe.
There’s a saying (I got it from Bruen’s The Guards) that you don’t get the face you deserve until you’re 40. Owen’s face certainly displays lines of a tortured interiority–something I feel like Marlowe has to have. (Which I don’t think Cary Grant had, even–but who am I to argue with Chandler?).
November 17th, 2023 at 4:52 pm
Correction: This is Spade–not Marlowe. I like casting Owen better as Marlowe as stated above. I don’t like him that much for Spade. He’s only Spade if Bogart is Spade. And Bogart is no ‘blond satan’. We have a specific physical description of Spade which is consistently ignored by casting agents: His “jaw was lonog and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, small, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down from high flat temples in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.”
November 17th, 2023 at 5:00 pm
Passing on the blonde Satan construct, that is Cary Grant. On the other hand, written work does not define casting unless the producer chooses to honor it.
November 17th, 2023 at 5:10 pm
Barry,
Of course you’re right in the real world. But having bogart as both spade and marlowe does a disservice to both. And I love bogart.
In any case—I’m more and more a book guy than a film guy precisely for the reason you mention. In a book I get to be the Producer of any film I want to see in my minds eye.
November 17th, 2023 at 5:18 pm
Tony,
I think you have it right.
November 17th, 2023 at 10:03 pm
I have now found a little bit more on the production and the story line. From the Hollywood Reporter:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/monsieur-spade-trailer-clive-owen-amc-1235649041/
There’s nothing to the story that makes me look forward to it, at least not right now. But who knows, maybe somebody in charge actually gets something right.
REACHER and THE LINCOLN LAWYER were both good, but (you know how it goes) a couple of others I won’t mention were not.
November 17th, 2023 at 10:58 pm
If we go by the book Spade would by 1960 be about seventy, go by the film and it is less of a stretch at nearly Sixty. Of course, I know we aren’t supposed to think of these things, but we do.
I’m not sure it will be all that easy to convince me Spade retired in France, it seems a bit out of character, but if it is well enough written that won’t matter.