the maltese falcon The Maltese Falcon (1941) Dir. John Huston - Possibly the most well-known film noir out there--and with good reason--The Maltese Falon puts Humphrey Bogart in the shoes of Sam Spade, a cynical, acerbic detective who has the capacity to be just as rotten as the criminals he hunts--yet somehow remains superior through his intelligence. Sam is no white knight of the Philip Marlowe variety, however (despite Bogart later playing this Raymond Chandler character); he falls victim to the same temptations of the underworld in the hunt for a legendary relic that could make him a very rich man.
The Maltese Falcon is relentlessly, ruthlessly dark, which is especially surprising for a time when you could literally hear filmmakers tiptoeing around the Hays code. Spade is the "good guy" in Falcon, yet after a certain point in the film, the morality is so ambiguous that there's no real distinction drawn between himself and the lowlife factions after the jeweled bird. Spade colludes with criminals, profits from them, and sends them up the river before he can personally catch any heat--and this is all done right under the noses of the police, who Spade tricks at every turn. Huston manages to capture the darkness of Hammett's story without grafting a superficial upeat note at the end; Spade's final (and famous) line of dialogue is a perfectly sarcastic-yet-profound take on the preceding events.
No review of The Maltese Falcon would be complete without mentioning the performances of Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. Greenstreet's role as Gutman (har), the morbidly obese criminal kingpin is played in an effeminate-yet-threating way, displaying the same amount of control over his surroundings as Spade, but without the overt manliness of Bogart. It's fair to say that Lorre is memorable in just about anything, and his role here as the cowardly criminal Joel Cairo is both manic and hilarious; it's easy to see that this is one of the roles that Ren the chihuahua was directly inspired from.
The Maltese Falcon is not just essential noir; it's an essential movie. And while it's not my favorite noir (that would have to be Double Indemnity), it's damn near perfect.
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bobservo) wrote,
The Maltese Falcon (1941) Dir. John Huston - Possibly the most well-known film noir out there--and with good reason--The Maltese Falon puts Humphrey Bogart in the shoes of Sam Spade, a cynical, acerbic detective who has the capacity to be just as rotten as the criminals he hunts--yet somehow remains superior through his intelligence. Sam is no white knight of the Philip Marlowe variety, however (despite Bogart later playing this Raymond Chandler character); he falls victim to the same temptations of the underworld in the hunt for a legendary relic that could make him a very rich man.
