Tuesday, August 15, 2017

*Once Again, 'The Stuff Of Dreams"- "The Maltese Falcon"- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the classic film noir detective film, The Maltese Falcon.

DVD Review

The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, directed by John Huston, 1941


The first two paragraphs are taken from a review of Dashiell Hammett’s book The Maltese Falcon, also reviewed today, from which this film adaptation was, pretty closely, drawn.

“Dashiell Hammett, along with Raymond Chandler, reinvented the detective genre in the 1930's and 1940's. They moved the genre away from the amateurish and simple parlor detectives that had previously dominated the genre to hard-boiled action characters who knew what was what and didn't mind taking a beating to get the bad guys. And along the way they produced some very memorable literary characters as well. Nick Charles (and Nora), Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe are well known exemplars of the action detective.

Hammett and Chandler also speak to a different, more macho if you will, but also a more world-wary and world-weary style of detection than today’s hyper-extended and techno-detail-oriented detectives who rely on computers and gadgetry more than guts. Still, with few exceptions, it is hard now to find a better proto-type for the kind of detective that writers of detective fiction wished they had, in their long, smoke-filled, whiskey-soaked, staring at that blank white page, writer nights (and we will not even speak of the days), dreamed up than Sam Spade. Nor a better, sparse, functional language-filled story line than old Dashiell Hammett thought up."

In literature and film there have been no lack of private detective-types depicted from the urbane Nick and Nora Charles (also a Hammett creation) of The Thin Man series to Mickey Spillane's rough and tumble Mike Hammer but the classic model for all modern ones is Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade (the Humphrey Bogart role in the film) in The Maltese Falcon. Some may argue on behalf of Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe and may have a point but as for film adaptations Spade wins hands down. Compare, if you will, Bogart's performance in The Maltese Falcon with his performance (good as it was, and as “hot” as it was with real life lady love, Lauren Bacall, be still my heart, co-starring) The Big Sleep. Get my point. But enough of that. What make's Spade the classic is his intrepidness, his orneriness, his dauntless dedication to the task at hand, his sense of irony, his incorruptibility, his willingness to take an inordinate amount of bumps and bruises for paltry fees and his off-hand manner with the ladies, femme fatales included, and a gun. And in The Maltese Falcon he needs all of these qualities and then some.

And for what? It is the bird, stupid. You know, the stuff that dreams are made of. This modern tale of greed and desire gets nicely worked with a cast of adventurers, including Sam's love interest, one femme fatale, Brigid, of course, who are serious, inept, and ultimately dangerous. There is a certain amount of off-hand humor as is warranted by some of the situations thrown in to boot. Sam is well up to handling everything thrown at him by is male adversaries. But, the dame (played by Mary Astor in the film), that is a different question. She is as greedy (if not more so) than the rest but she is ready to use her feminine wiles on even the incorruptible Spade in order to get that damn bird. That, dear friends, puts her beyond the pale and she will have many a lonely night in prison to think that through. In the end Sam's honor and the honor of his private detective profession is intact, and that's what counts in his world. Counts big, as it turns out.

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