THE MALTESE FALCON — CLASSIC FILM PICK

Hitchcockian right down to its foggy San Francisco location, “The Maltese Falcon” is considered one of the earliest additions to the “film noir” genre. The other one being “Stranger on the Third Floor” (1940), which also starred Peter Lorre.

The picture contains one of the most transparent examples of a MacGuffin next to King Arthur’s Holy Grail. When asked what the statue is, Bogart’s “Harry” cannily replies, “the stuff that dreams are made of.” Like I said, the MacGuffin is openly see-through.

Less obvious are the self-serving intentions of ambiguous characters in a murder mystery focused on identifying the person who killed private detective Sam Spade’s partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan). Tracking down a certain A meeting between Spade and Mary Astor’s name-changing potential client, regarding her missing sister, preceeds the murder as a bad omen. Spade may even be a suspect in the murder since he’s been folling around with Miles’s newly minted widow.     

Although Dashiell Hammett’s pulp novel already had two film versions to its credit (both under the same title “Satan Met a Lady”), screenwriter John Huston chose the story for his directorial debut. Huston emphasized the novel’s suspense elements to create a noir picture that didn’t rely on dark spectacle, but rather on the intrigue of its amoral characters. The fact of Huston’s celebrated filmmaking career that followed, proves the solid foundation that he created with this masterpiece of plot misdirection.

The film launched Humphrey Bogart’s career even as it invented the hardboiled cynical stereotype that Bogart would fulfill for the rest of his career. Bogart’s anti-hero character represents a model of male American virtues (and prejudices) of the World War II era. What’s notable about Bogart’s Sam Spade is that we get to see him laying the violence on thick with Sydney Greenstreet’s Kasper Gutman and his two goons, before exiting the scene with an otherwise character-breaking chuckle. This guy is in complete control of his emotions and his fluid ability to manipulate dangerous situations. Spade is a liar and a cheat, but we love him all the more for it because he exerts such confidence.  

Cinematographer Arthur Edeson’s tightly composed (shadows packed) scenes are something to savor. Edison’s iconic style of low-key lighting (utilizing a single lighting source) creates enormous shadow designs give the film a unique graphic design element that would become the signature design element to all examples of the Film Noir genre. The fluid-moving camera follows the action before resting in Dutch angles that emphasize the film’s suspense.

Not Rated. 100 mins. (A+) (Five stars — out of five / no halves)

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