A film noir twisting and turning and presenting Bogart at the top of his game, The Maltese Falcon is a deservedly classic Hollywood movie packed with subterfuge and manipulation from beginning to end.
P.I. Sam Spade (Bogart) becomes ensconced in a tangle of events involving a client (Astor), mysterious men (Greenstreet and Lorre) and an expensive, jewel-encrusted Falcon statuette. Spade endeavours to reach the bottom of the conspiracies that stand in his way, but the revelations he unearths go deeper than just the treasure – and it soon becomes a question of who to trust.
Bogart dominates proceedings here – Sam Spade is, in the vein of previous and future Bogart characters, a sour and emotionless man who will do anything for profit – but for whom doing the right thing will always be the prerogative. The famous actor is at turns sinister, hilarious and sensitive (though he doesn’t present the latter until the conclusion). If you’re to watch a Bogart movie to get a sense of his best performance, this film is probably one of the more recommended flicks to catch.
Mary Astor, formerly a silent movie actress, features here as Brigid, the woman who comes to Sam for help, and who entraps him in the Falcon conspiracies and manipulations. Astor is not the most attractive woman, but she makes up for that here by subtly changing her performance – Brigid is constantly lying to Sam, who sees right through her, and it’s a strength of her performance that Astor is so sneaky, so manipulative. Lee Patrick plays both secretary and confidante to Spade as Effie – a woman who clearly will do anything for the man, and the only person he can actually trust throughout the film. Gladys George, playing Iva Archer (Spade’s partner’s wife) adds one of the big mysteries to the film in that her character appears more significant at the onset than might be believed.
Peter Lorre plays Joel Cairo, a bizarrely eccentric man who seeks the Falcon, and the famous character actor once again presents his distinctive voice and face to the viewer as a man who is prepared to make any deal or tell any lie to get what he wants. Sydney Greenstreet, making his film debut at 62, plays the Fat Man, a rich opportunist by the name of Kasper Gutman, and the veteran stage actor creates an icy, somewhat disturbing persona on-screen as another individual seeking the Falcon. Barton McClane, as Lt. Dundy, projects some hard-handed police cynicism into the film also, reminding the viewer that Spade is not operating beyond the reaches of the law.
Director John Huston’s movie is an example of exemplar film-making; tight, focused scenes oozing with tension and terse, edgy dialogue. Huston was given this film as his first directorial outing, and you really wouldn’t think this on watching the movie. He edits the scenes together with skill, Bogart hardly ever seeming to be out of frame and the camera capturing what it needs and nothing more. The actors, all at the top of their game, are presented respectfully onscreen, and Huston’s career after this first film is a reflection of the vision he had whilst making this. As you might expect from a Dashiell Hammett novel, the script is taut, with Bogart and Lorre in particular getting many of the best lines. Bogart’s character Sam Spade receives many of the more dialogue-heavy scenes, but they seem to have been perfectly made for the actor’s infamous drawl.
The music, for what it is, suffices. Being an older film, the symphonic scores were not so popular nor necessary, and whilst this is a factor in the lesser significance of the music to this movie, it still doesn’t take away from the dramatic orchestration in the most tense scenes. Filmed in black-and-white (obviously the limitation at the time) the movie makes the most of the monochromatic presentation – bright lights of interiors making the different tones stand out, and the night scenes reflecting the great amount of darkness during the evenings, as well as accentuating the tension.
For an older film, this is a fantastic and taut thriller that still holds up sixty years later – a movie that for all its twists and turns is the Humphrey Bogart show, and the better for it.
9/10
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