Movie Review: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

I've never been a huge fan of detective films. I think it may be because when I was a child it was all about the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars and that didn't leave much time for detectives. I usually find that the things I've liked since before I was sixteen tend to stay with me now. I wish I could want to watch more detective films but my go-to movies always seem to be Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Westerns and Thrillers. However, I believe that The Maltese Falcon may be a film that gets me more interested in the work of detectives.

The Maltese Falcon is adapted from a novel by Dashiell Hammett. It tells the story of Private Eye Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), working on a case that involves the murder of his partner, a woman, three criminals and an artifact worth millions.

Now, to talk about a genre I have previously ignored: Film Noir. This is the movie that a great deal of film historians consider the first Film Noir. They argue that it laid the groundwork for mean streets, murder, femme fatales and extremely shifty motivations. And I would agree with them. The Maltese Falcon is unlike any film before it; it borrows the use of harsh shadows from German Expressionism, pits in a hard-boiled police detective in a quest for vengeance, one of the key players is a heavily sexualized woman, etc... All typical traits of what was to become Film Noir. Of course, Film Noir was already on its way in via the literature route, with books such as The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler being extremely successful. Bogart would later go on to play the hero of the novel, Philip Marlowe, in the 1946 adaptation.

Humphrey Bogart as hard and cold private eye Sam Spade.
In this writer's opinion, one of his best performances.

The most important aspect of the film, for me, is that it sealed the fate of Humphrey Bogart. Previously, he had only been starring in fairly generic gangster B movies and never really got a chance to show his acting chops to a wide audience. The gruffness and hardness of Bogart's performance would be cemented upon him for the rest of his life. It landed him the role of Rick in Casablanca (1942) the next year, and then Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, and then Fred in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), and on and on. And with good reason, as it's really hard to take your eyes off Bogart when he's delivering such a landmark performance. Sam Spade is cold and hard, like his name suggests, and it's all thanks to Bogart that these feelings are gotten across.

The plot is not very important. As is the Maltese Falcon itself. It's a classic example of a Hitchcockian "MacGuffin". Despite the fact that the title of the movie is the object which all the main characters desire, it plays a relatively minor role in the film, being only the catalyst for events to happen, much like the bag of money in Psycho (1960) or the briefcase in Pulp Fiction (1994). The characters are put to the forefront and they are the main focus. Other than Bogart's Spade, we have Mary Astor's femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy, Peter Lorre's homosexual Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet's main antagonist Kasper Gutman and Elisha Cook, Jr.'s pathetic gunsel Wilmer Cook. All of these characters are also typically tough Film Noir, although Joel Cairo seems to be more effeminate than the others, possibly due to his homosexuality.

The infamous scene in which Lorre emits a homosexual
nature that could be considered semi-erotic. 

The acting is fantastic. Other than Bogart, I thought that the performances from Lorre and Greenstreet were excellent, shining examples of their capabilities as character actors. Lorre's subtle gestures of homosexuality (his fussing over his clothes, his hysteria at the discovery of the fake falcon and making fellating movements during his interview with Spade) are pure brilliance, in a time when homosexuality was a taboo subject in the arts.

There is not much to be said about The Maltese Falcon that has not already been said. It's commonly regarded as one of the great classics of a lost era. It signified a dramatic shift in the way that movies could be made under the censorship guidlines, eventually paving the way, along with Hitchcock, for the more liberal approaches to cinema that included acceptable violence, sex and drug abuse. It ignited a whole new genre of films that were a lot edgier than their contemporaries. It launched Humphrey Bogart's career and saved him from a constant barrage of gangster films. And it is, without a doubt in my mind, one of the greatest movies ever made.

FINAL VERDICT: 5/5