Millions of people know The Grifters from the 1990 blockbuster film starring John Cusack, Anjelica Huston, and Annette Bening. The film is great, no doubt about it.
Jim Thompson's 1963 novel on which the film is based also rates five stars and deserves classic status for a number of reasons, a few of those reasons (please see below) not necessarily on display in the film.
The story revolves around Roy Dillon, Roy's mother Lilly and Roy's girlfriend Moira. All three are, in their own way, grifters, that is, con artists and thieves.
We're given the backstory right up front: Lilly is from a family of backwoods white trash. Lilly married a thirty-year-old railroad worker when she was thirteen and gave birth to Roy nine months later. Shortly after Roy's birth, Lilly's husband suffered an accident that left her a widow.
Lilly dumped Roy on her family but after a few year Lilly's father, with the help of a horsewhip, persuaded Lilly to take back her son and care for him. To avoid more whipping, Lilly scooped up Roy and fled to Baltimore where she put her classy hot looks and sharp mind to good use working the bar/nightclub circuit.
With a few deft strokes, Jim Thompson sketches the details of Lilly's relationship with Roy, for example: "her attitude was that of a selfish older sister to an annoying little brother." Author Jim also notes Roy was a well behaved, excellent student in school. Fast learning Roy quickly grasped all the ways exemplary behavior can pay off, particularly in terms of money and, after all, money makes the world go round.
Upon graduating high school, bye-bye, Lilly, and good riddance. Good-looking Roy, now age seventeen, strikes out on his own, makes a beeline for New York aka The Big Apple. Roy works door-to-door sales on commission but knows he can make more money, fast and easy, by the short con. He learns the craft from a master of the game, a guy called Mintz.
The Grifters picks up with Roy, age twenty-four, in Los Angeles, successful salesman and seasoned short con grifter. But then the unexpected: a whack in the guts. Oh, yes, at a suburban news shop, Roy pulls a con and is found out. The guy behind the counter comes out, takes a hefty windup with a wooden club and smacks Roy in the stomach. Ouch times ten!
Although in severe pain, thinking he might be dying, Roy finally makes it back to his apartment. He's resting on his couch when he receives a call from the front desk clerk. "A visitor, Mr. Dillon. A very attractive young lady. She says" - a tactful laugh - "She says she's your mother." Moments later Roy is seeing Lilly face-to-face for the first time in seven years.
Lilly immediately detects Roy is seriously injured and requires medical attention. Within the hour, an ambulance takes Roy to to the hospital. Turns out, Roy Dillon is still alive thanks to Lilly's intervention.
Thus we have the tale's framework. My words provide the merest bare-bones outline. The Grifters is phenomenal, the pieces fit together as if a magnificently crafted stainless steel timepiece - the folding in of backstory for each of the three grifters, the exactitude of atmosphere, of tone, of mood, the snappy, pitch perfect dialogue. Hell, if a hardboiled crime novel can reach perfection, The Grifters is that novel.
As I alluded to above, the book contains striking features not captured in the film. Here are three:
Lilly and Moira, Lookalikes
Lilly is thirty-eight and looks thirty-two, the same age as Moira. A director who wanted to make a present-day version of the film might even toy with the idea of using the same actress to play both parts. Or, the director might consider finding actresses that are twins or actresses who could almost pass as twins. Such casting would certainly underscore Moria is another Lilly, not to mention the powerful impact on an audience with all the Freudian overtones.
Lilly's Tragic Childhood
Lilly confronts Roy with her own abusive background: "It's all a matter of comparison, right? In the good neighborhoods you were raised in, and stacked up against the other mothers you saw there, I stank. But I didn't grow up in that kind of environment, Roy. Where I was raised a kid was lucky if he got three months of school in his life. Lucky if he didn't die of rickets or hookworm or plain old starvation, or something worse. I can't remember a day, from the time I was old enough to remember anything, that I had enough to eat and didn't get a beating..."
Jim Thompson knew the reality of poverty firsthand, both as a boy and a man. He rejected the contemporary American optimism of the affluent society brought on by capitalism and "free enterprise." He could see the oppressive side of capitalism, the ways poverty spawns dysfunction, turns family members against one another, propagates emotional and physical abuse.
Harrowing Revelation
Roy has a round of luscious sex with Carol, the nurse Lilly hired to tend to him while recovering. But then Roy asks Carol about the last time she had sex.
Carol reports: "It was there." She extended the tattooed arm. "There also I was made sterile." As if reading from a fairy tale, as if describing the trauma of someone else entirely, Carol goes on to relate her experience as a child of seven or eight in a Nazi concentration camp.
Reading this section of Grifters is both heart-wrenching and revealing. Jim Thompson switches narrative registers to convey the depth of Carol's tragedy. Yet Roy, forever the slick, smooth-talking grifter, proves incapable of relating or responding to Carol on a deeper, more dramatic level.
It can not be emphasized enough: the film The Grifters is super but don't miss out on reading Jim Thompson's absolutely first-rate novel.
American crime novelist Jim Thompson, 1906-1977
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