This will be my last movie essay to be published in 2024, and I thought I would wrap things up with a great film noir, 1941’s The Maltese Falcon, even if it isn’t my favorite picture of the genre.
There is a widespread belief this film is the first noir, though a few pictures came before which are regarded as canonical. But it is still an early work that solidifies many of the staples of the genre. It has a hard-boiled gumshoe, with Humphrey Bogart playing Sam Spade. It has an overly complicated plot, which I’ll get to shortly. It has a femme fatale in Mary Astor.
I have seen this film at least twice before and I somehow once again went into it thinking Bogart’s partner at the firm, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan), was dead before the opening credits. And so, I was once again surprised the man is alive, however briefly. He’s hot for Astor, their client, and so agrees to stakeout an apartment where he’s watching for the man she claims has made off with her sister. When cops find Cowan’s body later, they conclude the man he was tailing shot him in the back four times.
Glady George is Cowan’s widow, and she has an interesting way of mourning, kissing Bogart square on the mouth when she comes to the office. She would have made a better femme fatale than Astor who, while a duplicitous character, seems too straight-laced and refined to be the typical noir bad girl.
It’s no surprise Astor had ulterior motives when hiring the private eyes. Also, this is the kind of film that everybody kind of “knows” to some extent even without having seen a frame of it. Astor and a great many others are really after a preposterously valuable, jewel-encrusted knick-knack. What, you’re surprised the titular object is not made of British chocolate? You must have been thinking of The Maltesers Falcon, a film which doesn’t exist.
The way the villainous Sydney Greenstreet tells the history of the statuette is spellbinding. Best known for Casablanca, he is joined by Peter Lorre, another actor who would later be in that film. Lorre is always fascinating, but what I am surprised about here is how obvious it is his character is supposed to be gay. Admittedly, that is portrayed as a weakness, yet it still was still shocking to see that presented in any manner in a film of that era. Rounding out the main cast is the always reliable noir staple Elisha Cook, Jr.
One of the most notable elements of the production is the camera work. Given how monstrously heavy cameras were at that time, it boggles my mind how some shots were obtained. Even a simple maneuver which follows alongside Bogart and Lorre as they cross a hotel lobby meant dolly track had to be laid. Also, I imagine it was difficult for both the actors and the crew to keep the two men in frame in a tight two shot. Even better, the camera work doesn’t call attention to itself. It is only in retrospect that I considered how difficult some shots had to be.
Even the set design is interesting. Like the camera work, the sets are simple, except for one interesting touch: almost every room is shown to have a ceiling. Watch some other films of this vintage and you may notice two things: the camera will rarely be tilted upward, and the lighting will all be from overhead. Such lighting will also usually be bright and uniform enough so that shadows are nearly eliminated. Here, however, the lighting is almost entirely from the lamps inside the room and there are a wealth of shadows.
This was the third time a movie had been made of Dashiell Hammett’s novel in a ten-year span. Neither of the previous two versions were a success. First-time director John Huston was the one to do the material justice, and his writing shapes Hammett’s work into the perfect vehicle. I love such lines as Bogey telling a fidgety Astor: “You’re not going to go around the room straightening things and poking at the fire again, are you?” Or consider this line, which he delivers to Cook’s puffed-up wannabe thug: “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.”
Please indulge me in some stray observations I couldn’t work in elsewhere. I found it interesting how the secretary (Lee Patrick) at the Space & Archer Detective Agency is neither young nor particularly attractive, when this is the kind of role that begs for a smoldering hot woman. I’m not saying Patrick doesn’t have appeal, only that this was a quirky casting decision that breaks a noir convention which hadn’t even been established yet. Also, I was amused when Bogey sends a letter to himself by putting on the envelope a street address and just “CITY” as the city. I had not remembered this from previous viewings and was baffled recently when I saw the same thing done in The Mark of the Whistler.
The Maltese Falcon is a stunning picture and, while it wasn’t the first noir, it is interesting to see something that feels like the first of its kind. Elements of the genre which would quickly become ripe for parody feel fresh and new here. Like the cigarettes the guys smoke in the film, this is unfiltered, pure and uncut. To quote the most famous line from the film: “It is the stuff dreams are made of.”
Dir: John Huston
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet
Watched on the plain ol’ Warner Brothers blu-ray, which is overflowing with bonus features. Funny how even a blu-ray disc with such a wealth of content today seems, in this age of streaming, almost as quainte as most of the elements of this movie from 1941.