The Maltese Falcon (film)

• Release Date: 1941
• Director(s): John Huston
• Writer(s): John Huston
• Principal Actors and Roles: Mary Astor (Brigid O'Shaughnessy); Humphrey Bogart (Samuel Spade); Ward Bond (Detective Tom Polhaus); Jerome Cowan (Miles Archer); Gladys George (Iva Archer); Sydney Greenstreet (Kasper Gutman); Peter Lorre (Joel Cairo); Barton Maclane (Lieutenant Dundy); Lee Patrick (Effie Perine)
• Book / Story Film Based On: The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

The Maltese Falcon is one of the best-known and best-loved detective movies ever made. Many critics regard it as the first film noir, launching an entire genre of hard-edged films.

It was famed director John Huston’s first film. Prior to shooting The Maltese Falcon Huston had worked as a screenwriter. He adapted Dashiell Hammett’s popular novel of the same name, making his screenplay as faithful to the novel as he could. However, since Huston was working after the self-censoring Hays Code was introduced, he had to tone down some aspects of the book. Thus the 1931 film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon adhered more closely to Hammett’s text. For example, in the 1931, the relationship between two of the villains is clearly homosexual; in 1941 Huston could not portray that relationship as it occurs in the novel. Likewise, the lead character, private detective Sam Spade, drinks alcohol far less in Huston’s movie than he does in Hammett’s book.

Nonetheless, Huston made a film that almost instantly became a classic. Huston understood that the power of the book came from the characters, so he made them the focus of the movie. The actors rose to Huston’s expectations. For example, Sydney Greenstreet’s performance earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor, and it is considered one of the all-time great supporting performances. His portrayal of Kasper Gutman is so true to Hammett’s novel that it is almost impossible to separate the actor from the character in the book.

Huston also resisted the studio’s desire for a happy ending, instead leaving the audience with an almost-bitter aftertaste, and in so doing created an entirely new, uniquely American style of film that has been mimicked ever since.

Plot

The well-known film critic Roger Ebert noted that any attempt to give a linear recounting of the plot of The Maltese Falcon would not only be basically impossible but would miss the point of the movie—it is mostly hard-edged conversations interrupted by moments of violence that are driven by the characters, not the plot.

The film takes place in 1941. Sam Spade and Miles Archer are partners in a San Francisco detective agency. A beautiful woman named Ruth Wonderly walks in one day and hires them to find her missing sister. In return for a good-sized retainer, Archer agrees to follow Wonderly and a man named Thursby that evening.

Archer gets murdered, Thursby gets murdered, Wonderly turns out to be an alias for Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and she is embroiled in a mystery involving something called the Maltese Falcon—a jewel-encrusted gold statuette that is covered in black lacquer to conceal its value. As Spade is pursued by the police for Archer’s murder, he encounters a number of other shady characters who are also pursuing the statuette.

In the end, O’Shaughnessy is revealed as the murderer. She appeals to Spade, but he turns her over to the police with one of the most-memorable tough-guy lines in all of cinema. Spade says, "I hope they don’t hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means if you’re a good girl, you’ll be out in twenty years. I’ll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I’ll always remember you."

Significance

Critic Ebert considered the The Maltese Falcon to be one of the greatest films ever made. He referred to it as a "great divide" because numerous aspects of the film completely changed the landscape of movies, including the emergence of film legends Bogart, Huston, and Greenstreet.

Perhaps most significantly, Ebert and many other film historians regard The Maltese Falcon as the first true film noir, or "dark film," an American invention that includes gritty cityscapes, cynical anti-heroes in the form of hard-boiled detectives and tough-talking "dames," potential or real violence, and dark motives.

The Maltese Falcon was included in the Library of Congress National Film registry in 1989. It was nominated for three Academy Awards (best picture, best supporting actor for Sydney Greenstreet, and best adapted screenplay for John Huston) but it did not win in any of the categories.

It also helped to establish a new approach to filmmaking and cinematography, using unusual camera angles and low lighting to enhance the message of each scene. Some shots are from the floor and look past the characters to the ceilings of the dingy rooms they occupy, giving viewers an overwhelming sense of the sordid nature of their business as well as the dangerous nature of many of the characters.

For example, in one scene, Gutman has slipped knockout drops into Spade’s glass, but Spade doesn’t drink. Gutman tops up the drink, and still Spade doesn’t drink. During the scene, exposition about the value of the Maltese Falcon is provided, but the underlying tension is developed by the untouched, drugged drink. There are no close-ups of the glass, but its presence dominates the scene. When Spade finally drinks it’s almost a relief. This is followed by another classic scene. In a continuous take, the camera follows the now-drugged Spade from room to room, down a hallway. Then it cuts to his face, then to Gutman’s stomach, which is at Spade’s eye level, all to draw viewers deeply into the scene and the characters.

This was a new manner of storytelling in the movies, and it launched a new genre that revolutionized American cinema.

Awards and nominations

Nominated

• Academy Award (1941) Best Picture
• Academy Award (1941) Best Supporting Actor: Sydney Greenstreet
• Academy Award (1941) Best Screenplay (Adapted): John Huston

Bibliography

Ebert, Roger. The Great Movies. New York: Broadway, 2002. Print.

Irwin, John T. Unless the Threat of Death is Behind Them: Hard-Boiled Fiction and Film Noir. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Print.

Layman, Richard, ed., Discovering the Maltese Falcon and Sam Spade: The Evolution of Dashiell Hammett’s Masterpiece Including John Huston’s Movie with Humphrey Bogart. San Francisco: Vince Emery, 2005. Print.

Lewis, Jon and Eric Smoodon, editors. The American Film History Reader. New York: Routledge, 2014. Print.

Pettigrew, Terence. Bogey’s Movie Book: The Films of Humphrey Bogart: A Comprehensive Study. Fleet: Bredline/Amazon Digital Services, 2014. Digital.

Phillips, Gene D. Out of the Shadows: Expanding the Canon of Classic Film Noir. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2012. Print.

Pippin, Robert B. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2013. Print.

Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin’s 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen. New York: Harper, 2015. Print.