The Maltese Falcon
1941
John Huston
Let's see what everyone had to say about this one, or do you think we should learn how to stutter?
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Sean E.
Watching The Maltese Falcon is like discovering that old movies can still slap you—figuratively, not literally... though, as Bogart himself says, "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it." And honestly, after watching him deliver that line, you do take it... and also kind of like it.
The film keeps you on edge with twists, betrayals, and shadowy alleyways, but secretly, the real suspense is: how is Humphrey Bogart this hunky while solving crimes? Every glance he throws, every cigarette he lights, builds the insinuation that yes, even in 1941, Bogart could make you forget the plot entirely.
And yet, the plot does keep you hooked. Somehow the mystery of the Maltese Falcon competes with Bogart's sheer coolness. By the end, you're rooting for him, the Falcon, and honestly, anyone who can pull off a fedora that well (could I?). The Maltese Falcon proves that old films can still have it. Too bad Humphrey died 69 years ago, if he was still with us, I'm sure he'd still have it too (at 126 years old).
GRADE: 4 out of 5
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Joe
It's not a revelatory statement to say that Humphrey Bogart kills it in this one, just so fucking good. But I think it's worth examining, briefly, why we might admire such a man in such a film. Because Sam Spade is an asshole, right? And yet you get to the end of the movie and you're like, goddamn, I want to be him. Why? Such an ancient male impulse that I've always been pretty fascinated with. I am discomforted by it too. I think about it when I pass a billboard on I-95 that that hawks supplements to boost your testosterone, like I know who the intended targets are for those billboards, but I also wanna know why your typical small-dicked conservative Fox News-guzzling man might feel the desire to boost his testosterone. Or why someone might look up to our pedophile president and be like, "I want to be like him, he says it like it is." I understand the impulse, but only because I've thought about it a lot. I'm fascinated by it. And here I am, sitting at my desk thinking about Sam Spade, thinking about why I have admiration for such a little fucking asshole jerkoff.
That's probably the sign of a good movie, that it's able to convince you of something that you normally wouldn't have been convinced by. If I met a Sam Spade type on the street, I would do my best not to interact with him (actually, it's funny, now that I'm thinking about it, there is a dad in our parish who reminds me of a Sam Spade type, just constant boisterous shittalk from this dude, and I have done my best so far to not even look him in the eye in the past two years, with at least six more to go). But he's the good guy in The Maltese Falcon, undeniably. Despite the fact that he doesn't seem to care about anyone else, doesn't seem to have any empathy for anyone in his life whatsoever. Sure, the fact that he's surrounded by ne'er-do-wells might make a man jaded, but for your reaction to your business partner being murdered to be to change the names on the office window, that's some cold, uncaring shit. That's not the type of person that I would ever want to be, and it makes me uncomfortable to say that this is the man that we are looking up to in this film.
I think it's because Sam Spade knows exactly who he is, and is unbending in his rules about himself and the way that he lives his life. He has an identity, and it is unyielding. In between watching the first half of this movie and watching the second half of this movie, I had a pretty tense conversation with Pam about a whole host of things that were ailing each of us emotionally, but one of them was the commonality that we shared in feeling the difficulties of "keeping our own identities" in parenthood. (Pam also said the phrase "I'm tired of hearing about your fucking blog," so, uh, I don't think Pam is going to be joining us today, despite the fact that she picked the movie... sorry for fucking that one up, folks!) So it's possible that the term "identity" is just on my mind for different reasons and I'm applying it to The Maltese Falcon carelessly. But no, I really do feel like this could be the answer to why we admire Sam Spade. He is who he is, and he knows who he is.
You might think that Sam Spade has a tough life, with the constant threat of death hanging over him, and having to get his hands dirty to make his way through his life of detective work. But it's really not. The true burden in life is to care. And Sam Spade doesn't care. He doesn't give a fuck about anything or anyone. He's just cutting through life on the back of his wit and his luck. He doesn't know what it's like to love. He doesn't know love and so he doesn't know pain. If he can't feel love then he can't feel anything at all, that's my assumption. One of my notes originally was that it was weird how abrupt Spade's and Brigid O'Shaughnessy's falling in love was, but the true answer to that note revealed itself eventually—they weren't in love, Spade was just using her as a pawn. And if the movie wanted you to be unsure if Spade really was angry enough at Kasper Gutman to stand up and yell and break glass and storm off, well, then, that smile as Spade walks down the hallway afterward tells you everything. It's all bullshit. Spade might as well break the fourth wall, since he knows how ridiculous all this is, but he lives through it anyway, because he doesn't care.
The reputation of The Maltese Falcon preceded it, and it lived up to expectations. If something is the "first popular" of some subgenre of film, then I can usually count on it being good. This was the "first" film noir, and the film noir genre wouldn't have continued from here if this one wasn't great. I loved the fast-talking of it all, how everyone always has a quip, and tension is displayed through battles of words. I loved the tropes of the genre and how they were all on display here—the femme fatale, the MacGuffin, the double-crossing, the secret motives, the way that all that distrust comes out in anger, the way the anger comes out in witty angry banter. All this stuff originated pre-Maltese Falcon in books, but apparently this is where it makes the true leap to the big screen, which is cool. I like that I knew all these tropes already and that they were young and fit and strong while displayed here.
It also just felt like everyone was having a blast making it. I don't talk about it often because I still need help in determining what is "good filmmaking," but I could tell from watching this that it was good filmmaking. Everything was just so quick and compact, and because of that, the characters jumped off the screen. I was particularly fond of Sydney Greenstreet as Gutman (I suppose recognizing him from Casablanca, along with Bogart and Peter Lorre, and the directorial flourishes of Huston too, come to think of it), just in the way that he felt like the only one who could match Spade's ability to recognize how fucking ridiculous all of this was, but in a ying/yang sort of way (pessimistic vs. jovial). I just love fun movies. I love when a movie makes you think too, but there's a balance in my life that I appreciate. I gotta mix in those films that are just pure fucking fun. This was one of them.
It also just felt like everyone was having a blast making it. I don't talk about it often because I still need help in determining what is "good filmmaking," but I could tell from watching this that it was good filmmaking. Everything was just so quick and compact, and because of that, the characters jumped off the screen. I was particularly fond of Sydney Greenstreet as Gutman (I suppose recognizing him from Casablanca, along with Bogart and Peter Lorre, and the directorial flourishes of Huston too, come to think of it), just in the way that he felt like the only one who could match Spade's ability to recognize how fucking ridiculous all of this was, but in a ying/yang sort of way (pessimistic vs. jovial). I just love fun movies. I love when a movie makes you think too, but there's a balance in my life that I appreciate. I gotta mix in those films that are just pure fucking fun. This was one of them.
But maybe it is making me think too. Our expectations of masculinity, our responsibilities as human beings, how we sometimes look to the best of ourselves in good movies but occasionally look to the worst of ourselves too. On my worst days, I want to be Sam Spade. On my best days, I want to watch The Maltese Falcon.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
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GROUP AVERAGE GRADE: 4.25 pukes out of 5
When you're slapped in the comment section, you'll take it and like it.
(NEXT TIME: Another group has Days of Wine and Roses coming up in a couple days. A good week of black-and-white film here on the blog.)
7 comments:
In lieu of having Pam explain it (R.I.P. Blogging Pam), I will report that the reason she picked this film in the first place is that she had a starring role in the La Salle University play Red Herring, and to prepare for the role, her director told her that she should watch this movie and study Mary Astor. This was 20 years ago, and she's Never Seen It, so this was going to be her attempt to correct that particular oversight. I will say, having seen her performance in Red Herring on DVD maybe six or seven years later, she did not need to see it. She did a great fucking job.
Something that I did not pick up on during my viewing, and that is so barely there that I've only seen it implied once (in Ebert's review), is that Joel Cairo is supposed to be implied as gay, since he... had a handkerchief that smelled like perfume? I don't remember this, but I am taking Ebert's word for it. Apparently, Joel Cairo is explicitly gay in the novel, but they took it out for the movie because, ya know, 1941 and all. But this ALSO means that Sam Spade punches Joel Cairo because Cairo is gay, which is fucked up. I also saw on reddit that it was supposedly implied that Cairo, Gutman, and Wilmer Cook were all gay, and that there was a double entendre with Cook in which how he was described could mean gunman or prostitute. I don't know if I have a point with any of this, I'm just reporting.
The rare good old movie.
I know this anonymous comment is from Nate, since 1) he doesn't want to admit he likes a movie, but 2) he has a penchant for detective novels.
What makes the actual Maltese Falcon the ultimate MacGuffin is the reveal that itself is actually worthless. They've all been murdering and screwing each other over for a complete fake. Other MacGuffins have real power or status (the ark, the money in Psycho, the microfilm in North by Northwest) but just become secondary to the plot. This is literally worthless but still moves the characters the same way it would if it had value. The stuff dreams are made of indeed!
also is Sam Spade an actual piece of shit? Or is it all a carefully kept up ruse so the scum of the underworld will let him walk amongst them. He DID sleep with his partner's wife, but he also IS motivated to screw the person responsible for his death over from the jump. I feel like this same thing came up with Popeye Doyle. When you are acting like a scumbag, at some point is that just who you are? Is there really a difference? NOBODY plays that better than Bogart, glad this made him a star.
Damn, I love the comparison to Popeye Doyle. I feel like we definitely disagree on this character when PoYB covered The French Connection. At the time, I had made the argument that the film itself wanted you to think that he was a "bad person but a good cop," which I took issue with in a contemporaneous sense, because ACAB and because Popeye's willingness to operate outside the law is exactly what made him a bad cop AND a bad person.
Whereas I don't think The Maltese Falcon is making any such argument about Sam Spade being a bad person. I think the film is trying to paint him as a cool dude who's really good at what he does. And the film is good enough that it WORKS. I believe it—even though I can step back and say that I don't think that I agree with his way of living.
I.e. I don't think feeling "obligated professionally" to figure out your partner's death is the same as actually caring on a human level about your partner dying. He cared because he didn't want to look bad, and that was it.
Maybe the difference between Popeye and Sam is that of their chosen profession. Cops are civil servants who are obliged to do what is right (and the fact that they rarely do makes it so that ACAB), whereas private detectives have no such responsibility. They can operate within the margins. Not saying it's a noble profession, but at least Sam Spade isn't failing us as members of a society, since that was never his responsibility in the first place.
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