The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Directed by John Huston

Film Review

John Huston's classic 1941 film The Maltese Falcon certainly lives up to its reputation as one of the all time greats of Hollywood. Not only does it represent one of the most important landmarks in the history of American cinema, but it is quite possibly the most perfect, the most compelling and the most satisfying detective film ever made.

The film marked not only the directorial debut of John Huston, but its commercial success propelled the second rank actor Humphrey Bogart to stardom, launched the Hollywood careers of Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, and laid the foundations of American film noir.  Not bad going for a film that was made on a tight budget by a rookie director.

In the years prior to the making of The Maltese Falcon, John Huston had established a solid reputation as a screenwriter, on such films as Raoul Walsh's High Sierra (1941) and Howard Hawks's Sergeant York (1941).  Huston was keen to start making films and it was Howard Hawks who suggested he try an adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon.

This would be Warner Brothers' third adaptation of Hammett's novel in ten years.  Roy Del Ruth had directed the first version, The Maltese Falcon (1931), starring Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez.  This was followed by William Dieterle's Satan Met a Lady (1936), a comic re-interpretation which starred Bette Davis and Warren William.  Both of these versions bore little resemblance to Hammett's novel and neither achieved success at the box office.  Interestingly, it was the cinematographer on the second version, Arthur Edeson, who would work on Huston's film.

Huston was keen to capture the hard-boiled character of Hammett's original novel.  Hammett himself had worked as a private detective (for the famous Pinkerton agency) before becoming a writer, so he brought a realism to the detective genre which had previously been lacking.  Huston was able to retain this realism in his film adaptation by adhering as closely as possible to the novel and by imaginative use of lighting and photography.  The distinctive look which Huston and his cinematographer Arthur Edeson came up with for this film is what we now know as film noir.

Film noir was a development of the cinematographic style used by German expressionist filmmakers in the 1920s.  Essentially, it consists of harsh lighting (emphasising extreme contrasts of mood and moral viewpoint in the narrative), low camera angles (suggesting dominance of one character over another) and asymmetric composition (implying a sense of anxiety and derangement through loss of harmony).  Together, these elements create the impression of tension and conflict, amplifying the inner moods and feelings of the characters in the drama.

Huston's use of film noir is so brilliant in this film, so perfectly suited to the world of the solitary private detective, that many other directors would follow his lead.  Hollywood of the 1940s would be greatly influenced by film noir technique, and the distinctive noir style would be emulated and developed by filmmakers throughout the world, and is still referenced in modern cinema.

The Maltese Falcon is equally famous for establishing Humphrey Bogart as one of Hollywood's leading actors in the 1940s.  When he made this film the actor was 42 and had already appeared in 40 films, usually as the bad guy, known for his tough gangster portrayals in such films as The Roaring Twenties (1939).  Bogart was only offered the part after several other actors, notably George Raft, turned it down.  Raft would also reject the lead in Casablanca (1942), the part which made Bogart into a legend.

With a dual persona that combines a rough outward cynicism with a subtle inner emotional warmth, Bogart's Sam Spade is the archetypal antihero, and Bogart brilliantly conveys the complexities, the contradictions and the moral ambiguities of his character in a way that virtually no actor of his era could have done.  Bogart and Huston became good friends and would work together on other films: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948) and The African Queen (1951).

Bogart's isn't the only great performance The Maltese Falcon has to offer.  His three co-stars have almost as much to contribute to the success of the film as he does.  Mary Astor makes a sublime femme fatale, exuding dark, deadly duplicity and a seductive sensuality in every shot.  Peter Lorre is both chilling and comical as the mercurial henchman Joel Cairo.  It was this role which established him in Hollywood; he had previously been known for his sinister portrayal the child killer in Fritz Lang's M (1930).  And then there's Sydney Greenstreet, deliciously menacing yet utterly charming as the villainous Kasper Gutman (the part than won him an Oscar nomination).  Remarkably, this was the first screen role for the 61-year old British stage actor.  Greenstreet was so successful in the role that he would appear in many other films in Hollywood, usually as the urbane obese villain, and often partnered with Peter Lorre: Casablanca (1942), Passage to Marseille (1944) and The Verdict (1946).  John Huston's father, the great director Walter Huston, appears briefly as Captain Jacobi, the man who hands Bogart the troublesome bird-shaped statuette.

What is perhaps most striking about The Maltese Falcon is its extraordinary efficiency.  With few set changes and hardly any physical action, the film's relentless pace comes almost entirely from the rapid delivery of the lines (Bogart belts out lines faster than a machine gun splutters bullets) and the most effective composition of shots.  The impression is a mood of continual conflict and uncertainty, with four characters engaged in a game of intrigue and deceit, with no one having a clear idea about what is going on.  The film is daring for its time in that the familiar boundaries of good and evil are completely blurred - a sense of moral ambiguity which would become closely associated with film noir.

The film also works as a morality play.  The frantic hunt for the falcon statuette symbolises the worst side of human nature - greed, the placing of material wealth above those intangible things that make life worth living.  The film shows us the destructive impact of this deadly vice on the four characters, whose love of money lures them into a fruitless treasure hunt.  By the time Sam and Brigid (the most sympathetic of the four main characters) realise what they have lost, it is too late; they are both emotionally destroyed.  At least they manage to escape the fate that befalls Gutman and Cairo, whose futile quest will go on forever, an utterly pointless existence.

The Maltese Falcon is the definitive detective film and an incisive exploration of the human psyche.  Its use of film noir techniques may have been emulated but they have seldom been used as effectively as in this film.  With its arresting performances, stylish cinematography and thoroughly absorbing narrative, how could it fail to be anything less than one of Hollywood's greatest achievements?

Film Synopsis

One day, Brigid O'Shaughnessy enters the office of private detectives Sam Spade and Miles Archer to hire someone to find her missing sister.  The next day, Miles has been shot dead, along with the man he was trailing.  Sam is suspected by the police of at least one of the killings, and he suspects Brigid, who is strangely evasive about the matter.  The plot thickens when Sam meets Joel Cairo, a shady little man who offers him five thousand dollars to find a valuable jewel-encrusted statuette in the shape of a falcon.  Sam soon learns that Cairo is in the employ of Kasper Gutman, who alone knows the true value of the missing Maltese Falcon and who is prepared to find it at any cost...