NFR Project: 'The Maltese Falcon' (1941)

 

NFR Project: “The Maltese Falcon”

Dir: John Huston

Scr: John Huston

Pho: Arthur Edeson

Ed: Thomas Richards

Premiere: Oct. 18, 1941

101 min.

The list of directors that have made perfect feature films on their first try is short. It is even rarer for these wunderkinds to continue to create engaging work. Well, writer/director John Huston did it with his first film, The Maltese Falcon, and kept making fascinating films, 36 more, over the next 46 years.

The story was adapted from Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel of the same name – two films prior to this tried to adapt it, with indifferent success. Huston was by this time a go-to screenwriter in Hollywood. He relished the opportunity to make the film he wrote as he saw it in his mind. He studiously planned out the entire film, creating storyboards for every scene. He worked carefully with his cast, shooting almost entirely in sequence. This kept the players on the same page, and added immensely to the suspense inherent in the screenplay.

This definitive film noir gives us a world in which everyone is suspect. “Everyone has something to conceal,” says the protagonist, private detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart). Huston’s selection of Bogart was inspired – after years of knocking around as a supporting player, Bogie finally fell into the persona that would carry him through the rest of his career. The smart, cynical, world-weary professional, Sam Spade is the archetypical gumshoe – a man who has seen everything and has a low estimation of the integrity of his fellow human beings. He is rarely disappointed. He seems to subsist on cigarettes and whiskey. He is a dark knight who slickly navigates the slimy contours of the urban jungle. He discovers hidden truths and makes wrongs right. Thanks to this film, Bogie became a hard-bitten movie hero.

The story is as convoluted as you might expect a mystery film to be. Spade takes on the case of a woman, Miss Wonderly (Mary Astor) searching for her sister. Spade’s partner Archer (Jerome Cowan) goes out to help the lady, and gets murdered for his pains. Now Spade is determined to find out the truth from the lady, who turns out to be Brigid O’Shaughnessy. She is after a “black bird” – the fabled Maltese Falcon, a statuette encrusted with jewels, crafted in centuries past.

Her opponents include the Fat Man, Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet, marvelously malevolent in his first film) and Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), an effeminate schemer. They are assisted by the psychotic young gunman Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jr.). Together, this quartet bedevils Spade as they all seek to deceive each other and get ot the Falcon first.

The Falcon’s atmosphere is gloomy – everything is shot indoors or at night. Huston plays fair with the story – we rarely know more than Spade does at any given moment, and we are kept guessing as to the outcome until literally the final five minutes. Spade is tempted, time and again, to make a crooked choice, but each time he manages to walk a straight line without getting himself killed. Spade has a perverse integrity that means he lives by his own code, come what may. He is in society but not of it – his bleak take on humanity isolates him from his fellow man, making him an outlier. In this world, Spades are necessary and expendable at the same time. By film’s end, however, only Spade is standing. His caution and intelligence preclude him from being caught up in the greed and need for manipulation that infects the others onscreen.

Falcon boasts ingenious plotting, exquisite dialogue, and inspired performances. It has something more than this, however. There is something melancholy and affecting about the proceedings. Huston has captured a vibe that will resonate through countless succeeding examples of the film noir genre. This is simultaneously the starting point and most perfect example of the noir sensibility.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Sergeant York.