Reviews Aug 01 2008 @ 10:01 am
REVIEW: The Maltese Falcon
Directed By: John Huston
Written By: Dashiell Hammett (book) and John Huston (screenplay)
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook Jr.
Running Time: 100 minutes
Not Rated
Note: this is the first entry in our month long retrospective of film noir.
The Maltese Falcon is generally considered by most noir theorists to be the first genuine film noir, and most noir timelines begin in 1941 when Falcon was first released. As the inaugural film of any cinematic movement would be, the movie is blithely unaware of its status as First. As such, it solidifies certain noir conventions, while other hallmarks of the genre are nowhere to be found (i.e., on location shooting). But all of that academic mishmash aside, The Maltese Falcon is just brilliant filmmaking and equally wondrous the first, second, or tenth time you view it.
The plot, directly adapted from the hard-boiled detective novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett (this is actually the 3rd adaptation, after the 1931 film of the same name and Satan Met a Lady in 1936), is obtuse and complex like the best detective stories are. A title card fills us in on the history of the Falcon: made of solid gold and encrusted with rare jewels, it was a gift from the Knights Templar (is there anything those guys didn’t do?) to the emperor of Spain in 1536 but was seized by pirates and lost to history. A whole host of unsavory characters are now jockeying to reclaim the storied bird, and a smooth talking San Francisco PI finds himself embroiled in the middle of it all. Detectives are killed, double-crossers are crossed, and effeminate Egyptians are slapped, but the plot, as engaging as it is, is hardly the reason for Falcon’s lasting relevance. That distinction belongs to Sam Spade.
It’s difficult to overemphasize Sam Spade’s impact on American film; he is the direct forefather to such characters as J.J. Gittes (Chinatown), Tom Reagan (Miller’s Crossing), Brendan Frye (Brick) and even Joe Hallenbeck (The Last Boy Scout). It’s breathtaking to watch writer Dashiell Hammet, director John Huston, and actor Humphrey Bogart create cinematic history before your eyes. Sam Spade is both absolutely fascinating and immensely entertaining.
Initially he appears to be a cliché, but that’s only until you realize the stoic, world-weary private investigator with his name in big letters across his window is a cliché precisely because of Sam Spade. He’s cold and somewhat heartless, displaying a dispassionate and clinical interest in the death of his partner early on. “Didn’t Miles have his good points?” a beat detective asks him. “I guess so,” Spade shrugs as he quickly returns to his office. The first orders of business? Erase his partner’s name off the door and rebuff the dead man’s widow, whom he’s been having a casual affair with. In the midst of personal tragedy, Spade just seems bored.
That all changes, of course, with the introduction of Brigid O’Shaughnessy (the lovely Mary Astor), an attractive slip of a woman who bats her lids and lowers her eyes demurely as she pleads for Spade to help her. She is, of course, a liar, and we can see that from the moment she opens her mouth. Spade isn’t fooled either, never once being taken in by her coy fictions, but for some reason he’s intrigued. It quickly becomes a game between the two, Brigid lying her knickers off in ever-fruitless attempts to seduce the PI to her side of things, and Sam chuckling at every theatrical display of feigned innocence. She’s a pathological fibber, attempting to shovel ever more ridiculous amounts of cock and bull down Spade’s throat, and he knows it, and she knows that he knows it, but they keep circling one another, continually raising the stakes in their little game. Their relationship, and their interplay, laid the foundation for the doomed protagonist and femme fatale that became such a hallmark of the noir sensibility.
There is, however, one glaring difference in their relationship that sets The Maltese Falcon apart from other noir: Brigid, as much as she tries, can never truly be fatale because Spade is never truly doomed. He knows it, the movie knows it, and we know it. Although he doesn’t like to carry guns, he loves disarming those who do and does so with wit and glee. Every instance of danger is met with a grin and a clever quip, because Sam Spade is a man who knows more than everyone else in the room and can play each participant like a fiddle. Their stupidity in thinking they have control of the situation and the Falcon is laughable in the face of Spade’s Machiavellian maneuverings.
Roger Ebert has said that a film noir “at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending,” but The Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade stand in direct contradiction to that statement – at no point are you ever in doubt that he won’t come out on top. Granted, he must sacrifice the woman he ‘loves’ at the end, but the act seems more like the natural conclusion to the game he and Brigid have played than anything genuinely tragic. As Alain Silver’s encyclopedic Film Noir reference notes, “the viewer is getting a thrill out of sending Brigid over.”
Hard-boiled dialogue, twisty plotting, ludicrously over-the-top characters (Peter Lorre, especially, as the aforementioned effeminate Egyptian with the somewhat obvious name), and wicked humor – nearly 70 years later, The Maltese Falcon holds up like the solid gold the titular statue is made of. And honestly, you can’t argue with a film that has Sam Spade slapping Joel Cairo and saying, “When you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it.” Indeed we will, Sam. Indeed we will.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 10:27 am 1. Ari said …
Great review. It’s a magnificent film, one of the best of the Bogart/Huston collaborations (my fave still being Treasure of the Sierra Madre). Peter Lorre almost steals the movie for me, but Bogart is Bogart, and this is one of his best performances.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 10:30 am 2. Sam Juliano said …
Wonderful revisitation to here to the odds-on-favorite in the minds by most fans of the genre as the greatest of all fim noirs. Of course, DOUBLE INDEMNITY and OUT OF THE PAST fans could offer a fair enough argument. That is an astute differentiation there about THE MALTESE FALCON, in that Brigit “can never be the true femme fatale, as Spade is never really doomed.” Indeed!
THE MALTESE FALSON has marvelous pacing, that impeccable casting that you note (with attention placed on particular character traits) Of course Huston’s rapid-fire editing within scenes and Arthur Edeson’s low-key camera work help to definethe entire 40’s film noir style, largely for detective films.
I love your reference to how it is “impossible to underestimate Spade’s influence through the years on American film.
I would add Sidney Greenstreet to the rightful celebration of Peter Lorre’s performance, and would agree with your extremely high rating, although I myself, would go the distance with this defining American classic. But hey, 4 and a half and five are both definitive assessments, so no big deal.
A terrific and wonderfully-written launching of this series.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 10:41 am 3. Evan Derrick said …
Ari, I agree that Peter Lorre is a borderline showstealer, but his character seems the most in danger of descending in self-parody. And you’re right, Bogart is Bogart, and you can’t really mess with that.
And Sam, thanks for mentioning the excellent cinematography by Edeson. I wanted to get into his work (which is really quite fabulous), as well as the supporting cast, but I’m ever conscious of my reviews simply becoming a shotgun blast, where I attempt to cover every conceivable angle. So I decided to expand on the aspect I found most fascinating, the interplay between Bogart and Astor.
And I was hovering at 5 stars, but decided to go with 4.5 (it’s always a subjective, gut decision when you pick a star rating) mainly because so many of characters stray towards the undesirable realm of caricature. I’m always waffling on whether or not the supporting cast is brilliant or if they’re ridiculously one-note. Maybe a silly reason for docking a certifiable classic a half star, but there you go.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 10:48 am 4. Rick Olson said …
Fine review, Evan, and a great way to kick off Noir month.
Defining American classic it is … as you rightly point out, there’s no fatale in Astor’s femme, but that certainly changed by the end of WWII. After the war, we were a much more cynical, dark people, and noirs reflected that in increased nihilism. The Maltese Falcon is shot in shades of gray; after war, things are in much more high contrast, the blacks are blacker, the whites startlingly white.
Perhaps Ebert doesn’t consider Falcon a true noir?
on Aug 01 2008 @ 10:52 am 5. Graham said …
Evan, I’ll agree with you about the 4.5 stars. I love this movie, it’s a masterpiece, but I saw The Big Sleep first and watching Falcon after it made Falcon seem (if you can believe it) pale and tame in comparison. A fantastic movie – with a great MacGuffin – but not one of the all, all time great noirs for me. But you’ll be getting to all the great ones this month, so I can weight in on their merits then.
I’ve only seen Treasure once, and I didn’t like it all that much. It just seemed sort of silly – I didn’t buy Bogart degenerating so quickly. I need to rewatch it.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 10:54 am 6. Sam Juliano said …
Evan, I completely agree with your approach here in concentrating on the interplay between Bogie and Astor. That is primarily why you wrote such a great piece, and not one that only cited components that all fans of the film and genre only know too well.
Yeah, the 5 and 4 1/2 is indistinguishable.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 12:58 pm 7. Alexander Coleman said …
That was an excellent review, Evan, great job. I love Sidney Greenstreet in this as well. It’s truly amazing when you consider this was his first role.
I particularly enjoyed your point that Sam Spade is the great, great grandfather to all private eyes of all variations since 1941.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 1:30 pm 8. Chuck said …
The Maltese Falcon is one of my favorite movies and Huston is one of my favorite filmmakers. I love the lean, precise, unforgiving disciplined nature of the film. People tend to underacknowledge how daring of an actor Humphrey Bogart was, he would try anything and would monkey with his image in any way that was appropriate to serve the part at hand. Nice review Evan, but I will argue one point, Spade is doomed, just not in the traditional sense.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 1:49 pm 9. Evan Derrick said …
Thanks for the comments, guys.
And wonderful points, Chuck. The film is terribly disciplined – Huston was a meticulous taskmaster that kept everything neatly on track. The schedule proceeded so smoothly, in fact, that Huston would regularly have the cast out to a nearby golf club to tip back drinks and shoot the breeze.
I would like you to elaborate on your final point there, if possible. I smell an academic debate approaching.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 3:08 pm 10. Alexander Coleman said …
I concur with Chuck. Spade’s very much a doomed man, just not strictly narratively speaking. Even in his redemptive coda–”Don’t think I’m as crooked as I’m supposed to be!”–he’s doomed to being in the twilight, either indulging in things he shouldn’t or finally losing out because he still has a sense of morality, based in his own code and ethos. His life has become one tiring compromise.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 3:20 pm 11. Evan Derrick said …
See, I could barely sense any tiredness about him near the end. He goes on about how “maybe I love you and maybe you love me,” but he’s not particularly broken up about it. He does have an intensely strong sense of justice and morality, but I don’t think he’s losing out, mainly because I think he enjoys his life. It might not look enjoyable to us (no one particularly likes him, everyone tries to use him, he doesn’t get the girl in the end), but he doesn’t seem to mind.
One of the ways you know you’re watching a noir is that the main character, no matter how hard he tries, can’t seem to get any breaks, and fate keeps kicking him in the cojones every time he tries to get up. In many ways noir protagonists are doomed simply because they want more for themselves. Fate denies them at every turn.
Sam Spade isn’t like that. He doesn’t seem to want more. Money isn’t important. Friends don’t appear to be important. Not even women are important. As he walks down those stairs, with Brigid, in custody, riding down in the elevator next to him, it’s not hard to imagine him lightly going on to his next case, in which he will swagger, joke, and manipulate with just as much relish as he did this one. Sam appears to love the life of a PI and that is all he needs.
Noir heroes are never content, which always leads to their downfall. Sam Spade is as content as a kitten in a saucer of milk.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 4:00 pm 12. Alison Flynn said …
What a fabulous write-up of this great movie. This is a wonderful series that you’re doing here and I’ll be following closely.
on Aug 01 2008 @ 4:55 pm 13. Cinexcellence said …
I watched this many times as a youngster, but really don’t remember much about it.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 12:18 am 14. Rick Olson said …
I think it’s a bit artificial to try to retrofit Falcon to fit some kind of notion of what a noir is or should be. It is not a classic noir, even though it may be the first. Spade is world-weary, cynical, but hardly doomed, and Astor’s character is hardly a femme fatale.
We shouldn’t try to shoehorn the flick into some kind of stereotypical noir mold. It is what it is.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 2:38 am 15. christian said …
Perfect way to kick off the noir calender. I just love the moment when after Spade looks at his shaking hand and smiles. The stuff movie dreams are made of.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 3:38 am 16. films noir said …
I agree with Rick Olson, The Maltese Falcon is beyond noir and a “film noir” template misses the greatness of the film, which is so powerful that Hammett’s novel can never again be read without the film’s cast “owning” the characters.
While Spade is the quintessential noir protagonist, a loner on the edge of polite society, sorely tempted to transgress but declines and is neither saved nor redeemed, he is more complex than you allow.
For Sam and Brigid are truly lovers. He loves Brigid and this is abundantly clear at the end, and Brigid loves him. She will never make up the years she will lose in prison, and Sam will never recover from the necessary betrayal of their love. Sam was not seduced. Brigid is not a femme-fatale: she manipulates Sam, but never seeks to have him act as her surrogate.
Together they discover the desperate emptiness of their lives. She true to her nature can’t comprehend how he can send her down if he loves her, and he can’t fathom her lying while knowing she loves him.
The famous ad-lib by Bogart on the leaden black bird at the end says it all … “the stuff that dreams are made of”.
Just a quibble, Joel Cairo, holds a Greek passport…
on Aug 02 2008 @ 6:43 am 17. G said …
I have to say, I want to watch the film again to decide between Rick/films noir’s perspective and Evan’s. One of the things I didn’t like too much about Maltese Falcon the first time I saw it was how easily Spade fell in love; it seemed to me a classic example of romance jumping up between the male and female lead for no reason (contrast this to The Big Sleep, where the sexual tension between Bogart and Bacall (and Bogart and everyone else) is immediately obvious). So that love rang false, and how it motivated the characters did as well. Evan gave me a new way to read the film, in which Bogart is fascinated by Brigid but never taken in by her.
More to the point, it’s just ridiculous to say that this movie is not a “classic noir” or “beyond noir” because Spade isn’t doomed and Brigid isn’t a full fatale. It is the noir that established both of those templates, it just didn’t take them as far as later noirs would. And only some later noirs would do so – remember, many other classic noirs did end with even more happy romantic unions, and the hero frequently survives. This is all just a way of playing with the “noir template” that Maltese Falcon not only used, but invented.
Let me put this in terms of Batman (it’s easiest, plus, Batman is awesome). In the first Batman stories, Batman carried a gun and shot people with it. In the recently released The Dark Knight, Batman’s choice not to use fatal methods is the basis for the entire movie. Just like the concept of film noir, the concept of Batman is constantly played with, rewritten, and remolded. It doesn’t mean that it’s ever not Batman, nor does it mean that someone is asking Batman to fit into a “mold/template” when he points out that the very earliest Batman stories don’t quite jive with how we think of Batman.
The only problem with my analogy is that there is a much, much greater amount of freedom in the world of noir than that of Batman – there’s so much room to play with classic template. And I’m quite willing to call them all noirs, and not worry about which of them are pure or classic film noirs.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 10:29 am 18. Evan Derrick said …
Ah, now these are the kinds of discussions I love!
Let me just sort things out for a second. I think Rick and films noir were responding primarily to Alexander and Chuck’s initial thoughts that Spade is a doomed noir protagonist, just not in the typical sense. Although they both made the great point that Falcon shouldn’t be shoehorned into some kind of noir mold. I took that tack in my review simply because we’re reviewing all of these films in the context of noir and that felt, to me, to be the best way to keep things cohesive. All of that aside, they’re correct in that Falcon rises somewhat above noir and becomes a veritable classic in its own right.
Films noir, we might just have to agree to disagree on how strong Spade and Brigid’s ‘love’ for one another is. I have not read the source material (you, apparently, have), so I don’t know what might have been originally intended in regards to their relationship. In the film as it stands, however, I think there might be room for both of our interpretations.
And G, you’re right, there is so much leeway in defining noir. That is one of the reasons why it remains both fascinating and controversial. Even film historians can’t agree on it.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 10:50 am 19. Luke Harrington said …
Film noir, like any other movement, wasn’t a movement until critics defined it as such, and when they did, the predictably painted its defining characteristics with relatively broad brush strokes. For latter critics (i.e., us) to question whether a film like this is a “real” noir is somewhat silly (albeit interesting), as noir was neither recognized or defined at the time. It shouldn’t be surprising that this film doesn’t entirely fit into the box of “noir” — if every noir was the same, there wouldn’t have been a movement — there would have been a single film, remade ad nauseam (unless you want to call “J-horror remakes” a movement — and let’s not, mmmkay?).
Man, I hope that made sense…it’s still early for my brain.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 4:16 pm 20. G said …
Well, I’m mostly good with that little intervention Luke, but you got one part wrong: while noir and many other movements were not defined as movements until after the fact, there are also many, may movements that get characterized as such by the actual artists, especially in the first half of the 20th century. You couldn’t walk 10 feet in Paris in the 1920s without running into a salon claiming a brand new movement in art by taking a multi-syllable word and putting “ism” after it. Noir never got that treatment, of course, but many movements did.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 5:14 pm 21. Luke Harrington said …
Fair enough G, but how many of those self-described movements actually lasted long enough to be recognized as such by anyone who cared? Dadaism comes to mind (as do surrealism and futurism), but it’s a pretty short list.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 6:38 pm 22. Chuck said …
My comment that Spade is doomed has nothing to do what type of film I consider Falcon to be, you can call it a romantic comedy and I’ll say the same thing. Unless Spade is just an absolute, tee-total monster, and there are few of those, his mercenary nature will most likely come back to haunt him in some way. Some of Bogart’s other films explored that potential karmic payback.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 8:37 pm 23. WALL-E « As Cool As A Fruitstand said …
[...] of late didn’t make me an ideal candidate. Anyway: that won’t stop me from linking. The Maltese Falcon (probably my favorite classic noir) is up first, This Gun for Hire (have read the book, still need [...]
on Aug 02 2008 @ 9:24 pm 24. G said …
Well, there are a whole slew of them earlier than that, as well. Impressionism comes to mind, as do pointilism, realism, naturalism, and a few others. In terms of the modernists, you also left out Expressionism and the New Objectivity (which, admittedly, were not in Paris). Oh yeah, and Bauhaus in architecture.
There’s also a number of new waves from 1950 onward (German, Poland, China, others) that were state supported and thus designed as “movements” as the get go, not designated as them later.
And of course, the grandaddy of all New Waves was a bunch of critics who labeled themselves a new wave first, and then went out and made the films.
So it’s not an enormous list, but there are a lot.
on Aug 02 2008 @ 9:57 pm 25. Rick Olson said …
Chuck — I don’t see that Spade’s character is doomed, and I don’t see that your assertation is tied one way or another about its being a noir. I simply disagree that he’s doomed, that’s all. I see no evidence in the film for it.
For the record, I don’t think that Falcon is the first noir … to put it in G’s terms, it didn’t invent the “noir template.” Look, for example, at Renoir’s La Bete Humaine (1938), complete with stark, beautiful b&w style, a femme fatale, and a protagonist whose own nature as a “bete” (as well as the machinations of the femme fatale) dooms him.
In reality, noir is a style much more than a genre or a movmement, tied together by visual and story elements. That’s why, in a real sense, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck …
on Aug 02 2008 @ 10:31 pm 26. G said …
Rick, by mentioning the Human Beast you unleashed a potential monster (by which I mean me). I certainly do believe that Maltese Falcon originated the noir template. And whatever film did that had to be American, because the essence of noir is American.
I mentioned myself being a monster because I’m working through these issues in my graduate work. Renoir’s adaptation of Zola’s novel is a classic example of naturalism, which is the literary movement from which both hardboiled detective fiction and film noir sprang.
It’s hard from me not to see this through the eyes of the French auteur critics – they’re the ones who first made the argument for American exceptionalism. They would cut a hard line between Renoir’s naturalism (some of them, like Deleuze, would probably dismiss it as pseudo-naturalism) and the noir of Huston, Hawks, Wilder, et al. The essence of noir is its quintessential American roughness. Its vitality, to use a word those critics would have loved.
So for that reason (and you’re welcome to disagree with me and the critics) I would never consider The Human Beast a noir. It’s a degenerate offshoot of European naturalism – one of the last remnants of a 70 year old, decaying literary movement.
One question I don’t have an answer to: why did naturalism take root in American film when it did, and how did that movement, dedicated to exhaustion and degeneration, produce such vital and healthy films? I have no idea what the answer is, but it fascinates me.
on Aug 03 2008 @ 3:22 am 27. films noir said …
Yes – great discussion here.
Look at Sam’s relationship with Effie, his secretary: there is mutual respect and genuine affection. If Sam is as shallow as Evan says, what explains Effie’s intense loyalty to him?
G, comparing The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon is in a way comparing chalk and cheese. Firstly, yes there is sexual tension between Marlowe and Vivian, but in Chandler’s novel, unlike the movie, the relationship is never consummated and goes nowhere. Secondly, the movie of the Maltese Falcon follows Hammett’s novel very closely, and it is fairly evident in the movie and the book, that Sam and Brigid do sleep together, and the relationship is deeper than consensual sex. Thirdly, Hammett wrote in the 3rd person, and his hard-boiled prose makes the reader work harder for meaning than in Chandler, who writes in the first person with the PI, Philip Marlowe, relating his stories himself, and he is apt on occasion to reflect on his feelings quite deeply.
On the issue of film noir, I think the general consensus is that it is not a genre, but a movement or cycle identified in certain movies of the 40’s and 50’s, and when I say The Maltese Falcon is beyond noir, it is because such a seminal film cannot be constrained by categorizing it as a film noir, not “because Spade isn’t doomed and Brigid isn’t a full fatale.”
And while on what is film noir, I think it is fair to say that Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) and Boris Ingster’s Stanger on the Third Floor (1940) are the first movies to define the appearance of a noir sensibility, and Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) is the first true noir.
on Aug 03 2008 @ 5:25 am 28. Alexander Coleman said …
Poetic realism in France, as practiced by Renoir, Carne, Feydor, Chenal and Duvivier, among others, is arguably a direct antecedent movement to film noir, which is why La Bete Humaine and Pepe le Moko, among others, seem to belong to the greater noir family. Again, though, just as with noir or screwball comedy, you can ask the question–is it a true movement, with a discernible beginning, waxing, waning and ending, or is a style? I would contend that in each of these cases, it’s both: an artistic movement picks up steam when artists find a certain common tarpaulin against which to pursue their own interests, and so when noir was at its height filmmakers as disparate as Anthony Mann and Jules Dassin made films that were stylistically roughly similar as genre films but decisively unique in their personal themes. That said, a “style” can be approximately replicated, to varying degrees of success, naturally (”This film feels like a Nouvelle Vague picture,”; “The Dardennes are making DeSica and Rossellini proud with neo-realist films”; “Tarantino is attempting to deconstruct genre and cinema itself like Godard”; “Spielberg captures the chilly, queasy isolation and paranoia of the gritty ’70s pictures we still cherish,” etceteras) whereas a movement, no matter how loosely constructed in reality, or shaped by mere economical considerations (as noir in America and neo-realism in Italy both were), has its own lifespan and trajectory.
on Aug 03 2008 @ 6:44 am 29. Evan Derrick said …
Ok, I confess aspects of this conversation have gone somewhat over my head.
However, I will respond to film noirs assertion that there is mutual respect and affection between Spade and his secretary.
When they are unwrapping the Falcon in his office for the first time, and Spade realizes that he has the real thing, he grips Effie’s arm and says, “We’ve got it!” with a gleam in his eye. Effie grimaces and says, “You’re hurting me, Sam,” and there is real pain there. Sam doesn’t even acknowledge that he has hurt her. I would posit that this is proof he is more wrapped up in the case, solving it, and manipulating those around him then he is in personal relationships. He’s just discovered the one thing he can use to control everyone and it excites him, so much so that he grips Effie’s arm incredibly hard. Watch the scene. Effie is actually scared.
I would say that Sam’s charisma and complexity is what draws people to him, not his affection nor his compassion (both of which he has little to none).
on Aug 03 2008 @ 6:49 am 30. G said …
Films noir,
I’m confused as to why comparing the most famous Bogart PI movie, in which he plays the most famous PI of all time, to the second most famous Bogart PI movie, in which he plays the second most famous PI of all time, is like comparing “chalk to cheese.” It seems more like comparing one kind of brie to another kind of brie (or yellow chalk to white chalk, if we’re gonna go chalk). And most of your examples are from the novels, which I admittedly have not read and don’t really understand how they rate.
But this may just be the rather silly fact that I believe any movie can be rated and evaluated compared to any other movie. And I can’t understand how these movies aren’t very, very similar, even if they do also have significant differences. Are there any other films on this list more similiar to each other?
on Aug 03 2008 @ 8:22 am 31. Luke Harrington said …
G, aside from both being “hardboiled” PIs, Spade and Marlowe are fairly different characters (even though Chandler did use Spade as a starting point when creating Marlowe). Marlowe was essentially incorruptible, while Spade was perpetually corrupt; in other words, Marlowe, despite the seedy world he embraced, was always a sympathetic character, while Spade was a bit more of an antihero. Compared to Spade’s stories (of which there were only four), Marlowe adventures play out like comedies. I don’t know if that changes anything in this discussion, but I thought I’d point it out. It does explain why The Big Sleep is much lighter in tone that The Maltese Falcon, despite being somewhat later in the noir cycle.
on Aug 03 2008 @ 2:36 pm 32. Hedwig said …
I’m taking the night off at my parents’ place, and finally got around to reading the comments (and leaving my own). I gotta say: this is a hell of discussion.
It’s true that “noir” is a french word because the movement wasn’t recognized/identified until after WWII, when all the wartime movies finally got to France. And it’s tough determining firm characteristics, since noir has such disparate forms. For instance, I recently saw Night of the Hunter, and it has almost none of the standard identifiers (no femme fatale, no urban landscape, no morally gray protagonist). In fact, the label “gothic” might be more apt. Still, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it possible to put it in the noir framework.
I think what makes The Maltese Falcon truly a noir isn’t Brigid, or the crimes, or even the sharp, cynical dialogue (though those are factors). It’s mostly that nobody, in this film, is in the clear”: nobody is truly good or truly innocent. Even the murder victim isn’t someone important, and his death is no tragedy. But when a PI’s partner gets murdered, in isn’t good for business to make the culprit get away.
I have to admit though: I’m biased. I love this film. It isn’t as playful or funny as The Big Sleep, and it doesn’t have the Bogie/Bacall chemistry, but it’s one of the tightest, sharpest movies I know. Everything fits. And after seeing it about 5 times, I’m still not tired of it.
Ok, on to the other two posts!
on Aug 03 2008 @ 2:59 pm 33. Alexander Coleman said …
Luke, I agree with your points differentiating Spade and Marlowe. These are made clearer in the books, but like you say the films themselves also illustrate how they are markedly different from one another, and as you say, it results in the Marlowe films having a vastly “lighter” touch than the taut, more crustaceous personality of Spade and his stories.
Hedwig, I agree with you about The Night of the Hunter completely. While it’s not by any means a “classical” example of noir itself, it nonetheless does possess that je ne sais quoi that lets exist on the fringes of the “genre.” If noir’s style and technique is at least partly derived from German Expressionism, Laughton’s film is truly a film in that tradition, more so than the more clearly American hybrid. “Gothic” indeed.
on Aug 03 2008 @ 6:57 pm 34. films noir said …
I agree with Alexander regarding French poetic realism as a precursot of noir and generaly with his comments on film movements, but to say “noir in America and neo-realism in Italy [were both] shaped by mere economical considerations” is wrong.
The first big noirs were A pictures, and their origins have more to do with the European emigre status of the film-makers and a new way of looking at modernity. As I have written elsewhere:
“While many see film noir originating in post-WW2 trauma, I believe the origins of film noir lie largely elsewhere. Film noir was a manifestation of the fear, despair and loneliness at the core of American life apparent well before the first shot was fired in WWII. This is not to say that the experience of WWII did not influence or inform the themes and development of the noir cycle in the post-war period. The origins of film noir and why it flowered where and when it did are complex, and we can’t be definitive, but it is fairly evident that noir emerged before the US entered the War, and had it’s origins principally in the new wave of émigré European directors and cinematographers, who fashioned a new kind of cinema from the gangster flick of the 30’s and the pre-War hard-boiled novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Cornel Woolrich. We can also clearly see the influence of German expressionism, the burgeoning knowledge of psychology and its motifs, and precursors in the French poetic realist films of the 30’s. Noir was about the other, the “dark self” and the alienation in the modern American city manifested in psychosis, criminality, and paranoia. It was also born of an existential despair which had more to do with the desperate loneliness of urban life in the aftermath of the Depression. Noir writer Cornell Woolrich, for example, was a lonely and repressed individual, who spent his life in hotel rooms, and painter Edwards Hopper’s study of the long lonely night in Nighthawks was painted in 1942.”
on Aug 03 2008 @ 7:06 pm 35. films noir said …
G et al, one thing I must take issue with is the view that The Big Sleep, the movie, is lighter than The Maltese Falcon, the movie.
The Big Sleep is definately darker. Sam Spade doesn’t kill anyone, but Philip Marlowe kills two guys, one more than in the book: he is tougher, more driven, and morally suspect than in the definitely lighter, Murder My Sweet.
As I have said in my blog:
I find the actions of Marlowe in the final reel disturbing. He is almost a proto-Dirty Harry. Clearly shaken by the death by poisoning while he stood by of the small-time hood who leads Marlowe to the final showdown, Marlowe responds with vengeful brutality in the shootout with the goon, Canino, and then in the final scene when he confronts the crooked casino-operater, Eddie Mars.
While the killing of Canino at a stretch can be put down to self-defense, there is no moral justification apart from vengeance in the way Marlowe engineers the death of Eddie Mars – the killing is gratuitous and was not the only way out for Marlowe and Vivian. It is this final scene that marks The Big Sleep as a film noir. Marlowe has survived and got the girl – but at what cost?
on Aug 03 2008 @ 7:23 pm 36. G said …
Films noir: I absolutely agree with you about The Big Sleep. I never said it was lighter than Falcon.
on Aug 03 2008 @ 7:45 pm 37. Alexander Coleman said …
films noir, I don’t disagree in the least that noir as a genre or style was not shaped by economic concerns. Clearly most of the early “definitive noirs” were certainly A-pictures like The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. And certainly the emigre transfusion of von Sternberg, Lang, Ingster and others is what brought about the visual “DNA” of noir, which bore the way stemming from German Expressionism and French Poetic Realism, with much of the dramatic emphasis being based on the works of Hammett, Chandler and others, with the ’30s gangster cycle being a broad template. If you want to know what I really think, I would suggest noir’s very beginnings date back to at least Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari and Lang’s Mabuse series if not earlier.
I only meant that as a “movement” (the one we’re usually taught begins with The Maltese Falcon and more or less ended with Touch of Evil, however misjudged, doctrinaire and misjudged we may find it to be)–particularly during what we see today as the halcyon days of noir as a movement, with Detour, Out of the Past, Thieves’ Highway and others–the production costs involved in making many of the “B-films” coupled with their popularity helped to leave us with a wealth of films to enjoy forever.
This came out of the discussion in the teens of this thread in which people were struggling to define noir, as technical “style” or artistic “movement.”
Edward Hopper’s terrific.
on Aug 05 2008 @ 11:20 am 38. Lomax Lamat said …
I love this movie and love the “hard boiled dective” types. If anyone ever wants a new twist on this I would suggust giving the Dresden files series a try. Harry Dresden, is a classic hard boiled detective in modern day chicago – but he is also a wizzard. I love the series, but i especially love listening to it on my mp3 player, because pulp like this needs to be heard, don’t you agree?
Lomax Lamat
buzzymultimedia.com
on Aug 05 2008 @ 11:08 pm 39. K. Bowen said …
You know what I love about this film? Even sweet-faced lil’ ol’ Mary Astor is dishing out punishment. That’s hardcore!
on Sep 01 2008 @ 4:55 pm 40. JLN said …
Great review of a great movie. I’ve sen this movie several times in my life and each time something new is revealed to me. Such as Peter Lorre’s nearly pornographic holding of his cane handle to his mouth. I believe John Huston had great fun at fooling or abusing his censors during the filming. I wish I had been able to see this one in the theater to see how the audience reacted to these hidden gems.
on Sep 02 2008 @ 8:12 am 41. Evan Derrick said …
Thanks for dropping by, JLN. Watching a lot of the great noirs, you can see that many directors were working pretty hard to slip things by the censors. Especially in the late 50s, when the Production Code’s power began to diminish and wane, and you have films like “The Big Heat” and “Kiss Me Deadly” that are shocking even today.
It would be fascinating to sit in on a film like this with an original audience. I would imagine, however, that they would react in ways that would completely surprise us.
on Mar 12 2010 @ 5:34 pm 42. Donn Backman said …
Excellent! If I could write like this I would be well chuffed. The more I read articles of such quality as this (which is rare), the more I think there might be a future for the Net. Keep it up, as it were.