Review of The Maltese Falcon (1941) by Ivan V — 09 Feb 2013
Given all the hype, this film is disappointingly lame. Bogart's character (Sam Spade) talks too much, the femme fatale seems incapable of not lying, and the police are like walking planks, curiously accepting of almost any story Spade cares to feed them.
Regardless of how much they may respect his abilities, his needlessly insulting manner with them ought to have earned him an arrest and a few hours down at "the Hall" for wasting their time and being an ass.
I almost feel sorry for Cairo that he was interrogated all night instead. To be fair, I thought the Gutman and Cairo characters were fairly engaging, albeit in a ludicrous kind of way - without them the film would have been lamentably dry with little to redeem it.
And when the bird was finally revealed at the end, that was a disappointment too - a squat, ugly piece of ornamental tat! It was possibly the funniest aspect of the film - an underwhelming "treasure" after all of that buildup.
Apart from that, I thought Bogart's line in which he opined that the Knights of the Order of St John of Jerusalem were probably "pretty well fixed" was quite funny - his best one-liner of the film, but not worth seeing the whole thing for.
His "the stuff that dreams are made of" line at the end would be more poignant if the story didn't try so hard to be something it isn't. Sorry if I offend any "classic" film buffs here, but if they don't make them like this anymore, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
This review of The Maltese Falcon (1941) was written by Ivan V on 09 Feb 2013.
The Maltese Falcon has generally received very positive reviews.
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