Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.


The Maltese Falcon (1941) Directed by John Huston, from the novel by Dashiel Hammett

"When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it." Sam Spade.

This is a movie of firsts.  This was Sydney Greenstreet's first film role.  It was John Huston's directorial debut, and it is the very first, and frankly, very best, of the genre called Film Noir, focusing on hard men and tough dames, populating an urban landscape of mean streets, where the sun never seems to rise.  Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is not a hero.  He is an unmitigated b*stard.  But he has a code he lives by, and that sees him through.

The film follows a certain convention, the convention of the McGuffin.  It does not matter what the McGuffin is, just that everyone wants it, or fears it, and possession of it drives the movie forward.  Raiders of the Lost Ark is a perfect example.

Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) take a case from a Brigid O'Shaughnessey (Mary Astor).  From the moment she lied hello, they knew she was bad news, but she was pretty enough, and overpaid enough that they did not care.  Perhaps they should have.  Soon, Archer is dead, and so is the man she hired them to follow, and Sam looks a fairly good suspect for both killings.

He is drawn into a web of conflicting stories and players whose loyalty is as changeable as the weather, and as suspect as the blue plate special.  There is Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) a man with a gardenia scented handkerchief (and we all know what that meant in 1941) who has a depressing habit of trying the same trick over and over.  There is Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr.) who is a gun man, and who falls for the same trick over and over. (Homosexual subtext alert here, as well, gunsel means hired gun, but can also carry a connotation of homosexual; Bogie continually pushed his buttons, letting his anger keep him off balance.)

Then there is the fat man, Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet).  Nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role on this, his first effort before the cameras.  Greenstreet, 62, continued to have a prolific late life career as a great character actor.  Each of these four (three, really, Wilmer is just a tool) is in pursuit of the McGuffin, the Maltese Falcon, a foot tall statuette, gold and jewel encrusted, covered in black enamel.  Tribute from the Templars to King Charles V, it disappeared into pirate hands, and has sketched an erratic path through history.  Gutman has pursued it for seventeen years, and he intends to let nothing, not morality, ethics, love or Sam Spade stand in his way.

Can Sam get himself off the hook for murder?  Can he locate the bird before they do and evaporate, leaving him holding the bag?  And what of the girl?  Is she as deadly as she is lovely?  And what are her real plans for Sam?

This set the stage for much that followed.  It made Bogie a star.  It paved the way for all his classics that followed; before this, he was a distinctive actor noted for playing hoods.  After this, he was a leading man.

And it spawned a generation of movies in the same genre, The Big Sleep, The Glass Key, Strangers on a Train, Double Indemnity.  Each featured style that utilized the black and white medium, and featured amoral characters that while the focus of the story, were not always heroes.  Hard boiled detectives and gorgeous manipulative dames in trouble were a frequent feature.  And it all started here.

The movie was made in two months, for a cost of $300,000.  It features story over sets, and cinematography as a tool to generate interest without expenditure.  It is one of the finest examples of a movie following the book word for word, and the only changes seem to have strengthened it.  This is a classic, and well worth rediscovering tonight.

Like Sam Spade, this review is Lean-N-Mean.  It weighs in at a concise 666 words.

Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12