It's a top 100 movie for me. This is The Maltese Falcon by great director John Houston. Here's why this movie is great. So many unique observations coming up next.
Maltese Falcon, you probably know based on a novel by Dashiell Hammett. Go read the book. It's great.
They made a movie about it almost right after in 1930 the book was released. This is basically then a remake and so one of the better or maybe the best remakes ever sometimes this movie is also called the first great film noir the first noir ever made contestable whether that's the case but i'm happy to call it the first noir ever if you want to consider influence this is the seed of thousands well at least hundreds not thousands of movies including humphrey bogart's character sam spade spawning so many copies iconic shots all kinds of you know references to humphrey bogart in all kinds of cinema after this, including a very influential French New Wave. I've covered on this channel, for example, Jean-Luc Godard's Made in the USA and other Godard movies like that.
This film is a talkative movie, lots of exposition, lots of talking. It seems to revel in sound. This is only 10 years after the sound era enters movies and seems to enjoy the fact that movies are finally getting, characters are finally getting to talk. There is a bit of sort of screwball comedy stuff in here, at least the fast talking that was developed in the late 1930s.
Preston Sturgis, for example, and so the characters talk over each other, although there are spaces and gaps for them to pause and for us to consider what's happening. I kind of like the blend of that, the slower aspects of this movie with the quicker. John Huston really understands tempo. I mean, the fastness, the slowness of scenes, shots, characters moving around, and the way they speak, perfect in this movie. In fact, I might call this a...
perfect movie or near perfect just for what it is. I mean, it's a hunt for an object. It's a detective story where no one's telling the truth. The detective is perhaps up to no good. Perhaps he's an anti-hero character.
In fact, I find this World War II era film, this is right before the U.S. enters World War II, kind of foreshadowing the development of... anti-hero stories that would come later in the mid to late 1940s and definitely into the 1950s where the main character is a very shady person. And the detective, you know, in the classic detective pulp fiction stories, walks the line between the criminal underground and the world of law and justice, the police world. He's really caught in between both. And sometimes he's in the criminal world, sometimes he's in the police world.
Definitely Santa's Spade is embodying being a criminal, being evil, being corrupt. being willing to do anything for what you want versus the law and order of the police and sort of blend of both so well done because this movie is so well known i don't feel the need to discuss the plot much you just need to know that sam spade his classic san francisco 1940s detective he's got a partner named miles archer very quickly in the movie miles archer dies strangely sam spade does not seem to show any emotion about this does he hate his partner what's gone wrong between them he might have even and i think this is very likely had an affair with archer's wife as he talks to archer's wife it seems to there seems to be something between them and so there's always innuendo and you the viewer can infer so many things i think this movie is 10 surface it's the iceberg theory you're seeing 10 of what's there but underneath All kinds of things are happening with the characters. I think Sam Spade's kind of a playboy, actually. If you look at what happens in this movie, he's definitely sleeping with at least two women, I believe, in this movie. Sam Spade then gets caught up in looking for the Maltese Falcon.
He calls it a dingus with this fabulous ancient historical artifact that's worth a lot of money. Three characters looking for it, and you have this... wonderful i just love him peter lori in this playing joel cairo i just can't i just one of my favorite actors ever peter lori so creepy in this movie but also sydney greenstreet wins an academy award for his roles the fat man and then you have gladys george playing this wonderful femme fatale but maybe just a shady female and it's hard oh and sam spade struggles struggles with this hard to tell when she is lying or if she's lying if everything she says is a lie or part of the truth Are they really falling in love with this movie?
It's definitely movie magic here. She plays the client Ruth Wonderly, this, you know, forlorn female walks into the detective office, classic trope, and it's a very simple case. She says she's got a lost sister, asks the detectives to go find the lost sister. Of course, detective story, this is a simple case that blossoms out into an uber complex case, a shadowy underground world, and a case that's been going on for a long time.
been going on overseas and will continue to go on overseas it's got a case that's going to span the world so the idea that something bad has happened but it's only particular and local but it's blossoming out to the global it's definitely a world war ii era theme in my view it's also the idea of a fallen world and on the surface the world looks nice and pleasant you know when ruth wonderly shows up she's considered to be a very gorgeous woman the secretary tells sam spade this He stands up in awe. Just look at the camera work here. Very quickly, we find out that Ruth Wonderly is an alias for Mrs. Shaughnessy, and then she plays Sam Spade, or maybe he plays her, or both play each other throughout this entire movie. One question this movie asks, or the story that Hammett wrote, is the Dingus, the Maltese Falcon, are these characters greedy inherently to search for the object, and it's their greed first and foremost that then gets put in a particular scene, or...
Does the commodity itself and the price that it's worth create the greed and then generate the evil? The big question here is, does stuff and the price of stuff, capitalism in general, create greed? Or is greed inherent in us?
And then, you know, we are greedy no matter what scenario. And it just happens to be that they're all going after the falcon here. And greed leads to evil, including murder. Question I have for Sam Spade, is he an anti-hero by nature?
Or is he... grisly, maybe a little shady, in all dealings by nature, or is that sort of created by his environment and he is reacting to it and developed acting chops in order within this world of performances in order to perform properly so that he can fulfill his functions as a detective and do the work he needs to do while not getting killed or harmed in the process. The question then is, is he developed acting chops which means just acting in the real world. I don't mean being an actor, although you see him sometimes, you know, showing that he's acting or making things up or emoting in order to get something. But in terms of actions, he's learned how to act and behave in front of other people, perform for them.
One of Director John Huston's strategies here is to show off highs and lows and to, you know, mix things up. Sometimes the character's really high and big and ominous looking. Sometimes they're low.
That includes the fat man, who by nature is fat and large. he's called fat of course in the movie sometimes huge on screen sometimes he's small sometimes sam spade's huge sometimes small characters go up they go down and that gives this movie which is boxed in by the 1.33 aspect ratio it gives it a lot of dimension both in terms of height but also depth and you see the characters go back and deep of course this movie shot on on a set where they're very tight spaces the rooms are close it's not outside hardly at all But Houston shows you and all filmmakers how to direct a movie to give it a lot of depth and width. Of course, that adds to the idea of these characters having more depth or there's more to them under the surface than what there seems to be.
Because everyone's a suspect. Everyone's, you know, hiding something. Well, to add depth to those characters means that there is something more to them. And Sam Spade, along with you, had to figure out what each of them want and what the background is for them.
and what their motivations are. Because this movie is such a powerful vision, an all-consuming dream, I think it's hard for movie makers to get away from it and to do something different with the detective story. You get all kinds of detective stories from Western science fiction, high art for cinephiles.
There is an endless number of these sorts of movies that have the same basic scenario of this movie, considering all the things I've talked about in this video, and there's no end to this sort of thing, especially with something like Blade Runner. And so, okay. How do we evolve from the detective story, get past it, or maybe this is all there is.
I don't mind that because I think there's umpteen thousand variations on this particular story, the scenario, the way it's shot. And so I think that needs to be explored. Man, this movie has such a strong vision and thus a powerful influence.
It's going to take a while to get beyond the detective story setup that this movie articulates. What do you think of The Maltese Falcon? What do you think of what I said?
So much more to say about it. Let us know in the comments. Please subscribe to this channel for more great content. Thank you and have a great day.