Florian Defontaine

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.

Lomax Lamat
buzzymultimedia.com

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.

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?

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.”

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.

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!

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?

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).

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.

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.

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 …

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.

Man, I hope that made sense…it’s still early for my brain.

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.

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.

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…

We shouldn’t try to shoehorn the flick into some kind of stereotypical noir mold. It is what it is.

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.

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.

I particularly enjoyed your point that Sam Spade is the great, great grandfather to all private eyes of all variations since 1941.

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.

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?

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.