Review of The Maltese Falcon (1941) by Russell W — 05 Jun 2012

Director John Huston's dark and stylish film noir is a film that will be studied and taken from by many other "noirs" for years to come. It truly is a good movie. Humphrey Bogart plays a sly cop with a tough attitude, destined to pawn the murder of his partner off on an unsuspecting "victim.

" This plot-hole comes full circle in the end as the dazzling twist and shocking ending unfolds itself. The random twists and turns this movie took all seemed to match Bogart's character very well, being as we could never truly understand what he was doing.

That goes without saying this movie did seem to be filled with some unexplained, spontaneous plot-holes. In the first 10 minutes we're involved in a "simple" murder story of a character who hasn't even been onscreen for 5 minutes.

Then...well...the story changes with one sly remark of Bogart's character, as it does MANY times in this picture. A group of well established actors will be going on about one point when a simple comment will throw everybody off and change the subject completely.

I honestly found the story hard to follow. Not saying it's a bad story, not at all. Just that maybe the delivery could've been better by some of the actors, especially Mary Astor who continually had emotional problems and couldn't control her tear-docks from shedding crude water from her eyeballs.

Perhaps it was all in her character but....eh seems like a copout to me. Everyone else spoke extremely fast which must've been the style of acting back then, which we can clearly see in Bogart. Aside from the constant garble and not being able to follow much of what they were saying, I though everyone else did a fine job.

But what really showed up well in this movie, aside from the story delivery, was the manner in which Huston made the movie. All the dark shadow shots and transitional sequences were impeccable for that time, and did a good job setting the tone so that it really felt, "film-nourish.

" The Maltese Falcon is a good movie that pledged farewell to old fashioned optimism in films, and introduced the darker side of cinema with sheer craft and a pretty good script.