Review of The Maltese Falcon (1941) by Tiberio S — 12 Jul 2016

I enjoy antiheroes who have to take a whole movie to do anything remotely moral - that's Sam Spade, played as cool and tough as Humphry Bogart knows how. His sly bravado, tough with police and women, seemingly careless attitude with the death of his partner Archer, make him a questionable character throughout. He has various affairs, including Archer's wife, which we learn after the poor bastard's been shot. I more than half expect Spade will end up just as corrupt as the adversaries he is forced to help, and I'm not far off. His last act is just, but he does it cruel; he's not out to win the audiences heart, just his own. It's the best way he can make up for his apathy towards Archer. They cut through the Hollywood cliches with him, and the end kiss is far from romantic or resolving, rather just a tease for what won't be. That's the kind of character I like to see, but I suppose too often would water it down. Good to have these types rare.

But the key to making this whole picture work is the trickster, Brigid O'Shaugnessy, who goes by other names to start. She is a compulsive liar, her ultimate goal never quite clear, nor her feelings, which she may have none besides greed and/or fear. She always keeps us guessing. And once we feel settled into one version of the truth, it changes - that happens all through the show, right till the very end. And if that doesn't captivate, nothing will, because it's the essence of the film's mystery.

Peter Lorre is wildly entertaining, somewhat comic relief, by far the best of the antagonist bunch, if you exclude O'Shaugnessy for being in between. He plays Cairo, a not-so-tough baddie for the Fat Man on the hunt for Maltese Falcon. He tends to get his ass kicked by Spade. As does Fat Man's right hand "like a son" Wilmer, played wonderfully by Elisha Cook Jr, using the same pastiche that make most his other roles work in context; his psycho lemur stare, supersensitivity, frustration, and dumbness.

I am not familiar enough with Huston to weigh his work as a director, but I like his staging, the body language he gets from his actors. But in conjunction with camera? Not so much here, which is part of my lacking 5 stars. I didn't love the cinematography, and noirs are typically an easy sell for me. I didn't think the photography grabbed me at any particular moment. The attitudes of the actors did that.

What the actors didn't convince me of was the violence, which at some points was strong, and others just plain awkward, as are most movies of this time. Not Cagney, he can hit - but these folks had some strange moves, including the neck hit and straight jacket manuever on Wilmer. The latter straight jacked move I liked, funny and interesting, but Spade has a bad habit of handing guns back; he does it with Cairo and Cook. It's a statement of his confidence; he needn't worry about another carrying a gun, and later in the film tells us that it's a talent of his to snatch them - I guess he does it for sport, he enjoys the thrill. And so does the audience.

I've always known one part of this film, the end line when Spade answers the police about what Maltese Falcon, a fake, is: "it's the stuff that dreams are made of." Whenever I saw that in a greatest movies highlight reel, it moved me. In the film itself it confused me, felt contrived, moment-grabbing. I'm sure there's various explanations, and it's simple enough, but maybe a bit too heavy. More like it's the thing nightmares are made of, since that's what this journey, and all the people hurt along the way, has been.