Scene from The Maltese Falcon. (Photo/Warner Bros.)
Hello, and welcome to the first of hopefully many Retro Reels. A film review column where I’m going to take a look at films of old and obscure, the forgotten and the weird.
And to start off this film review column, I’m going to talk about books.
The walls of my local bookstore are adorned with posters of old books people don’t read anymore. The Bell Jar, The Sound and the Fury, For Whom the Bell Tolls, but I’ve always been fascinated with The Maltese Falcon.
The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by Dashiell Hammett about a detective who gets caught up with criminals searching for the ancient Maltese Falcon.
I’ve always been curious about the story, being a big fan of detective stories and film noir, so what better time to watch it than for this column?
The Maltese Falcon has been adapted twice, first in 1931, directed by Roy Del Ruth, and again in 1941, directed by John Huston.
The latter is the one I watched, as it’s the version that became famous. Critics praised it as “the best mystery thriller of the year” (The New York Times), and it was one of the first 25 films to be preserved by Congress in the National Film Registry.
So, does The Maltese Falcon live up to all the hype?
Unfortunately, no.
The Maltese Falcon is a very dated film, not because it has offensive jokes or dated references, but because of how it is written and directed.
The film starts with Detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) being hired by Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor) to help find her sister, who ran off with a man named Floyd Thursby. Spade’s partner trails Thursby and is shot and killed, but then Thursby also turns up dead, and Spade needs to figure out what exactly is going on.
It’s a pretty good hook for a detective story.
There’s the mystery of who did the murders, and it has a personal connection to the main detective with the dead partner.
The only problem is that Sam Spade doesn’t do any detective work.
A good detective story or mystery is one that the audience can follow along with and solve in real-time as the characters do, such as Knives Out or Chinatown. The Maltese Falcon is not that.
Throughout the film, every major character and piece of evidence waltzes into Spade’s office with zero warning. Nothing is earned; Spade either walks into it, or it walks into Spade.
Even the titular Maltese Falcon shows up at Spade’s door unannounced while he’s talking to his secretary about what’s going on, and that’s another problem with the movie.
The characters talk so much and fast that you lose the plot.
The biggest thing I’ve learned over my many film classes is show, don’t tell.
You don’t want your characters to constantly talk about what they’re doing or why; they should do it and let the audience figure out the why based on their actions and interactions with other characters.
But in The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade just doesn’t shut up.
He talks a mile a minute about what’s going on and talks so much that his words fly over the audience’s heads.
There’s also never anything meaningful in his words, nothing that lets you come to understand the character better or learn why he does what he does.
He is solely focused on talking about the plot and advancing said plot. Because of this, Sam Spade comes off as a really heartless and bland character.
Sam Spade is a far cry from the well-rounded, motivation-driven characters featured in films today.
He never faces hardships or shows strong emotions (even at his partner’s death). He always knows what to say, using his silver tongue to advance the plot at every turn, manipulating each crooked individual after the Maltese Falcon without a sweat.
It results in a really boring film, as there’s nothing exciting for modern audiences to cling to. He doesn’t get into any shootouts or ever feels like he’s in danger. There’s a very small side-plot about the police suspecting Spade of killing his partner, but nothing ever comes of it. It’s just a distraction from the main story, which itself is also a mess.
The Maltese Falcon feels like a story that’s part of another, much larger and more enjoyable story.
The main villain, Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet), talks about how he’s searched for the Maltese Falcon for 17 years through fires in Paris, heists in Istanbul, and shootouts in Hong Kong.
This sounds ten times more interesting than The Maltese Falcon’s story, in which things conveniently fall into the detective’s lap so we can reach the end.
While a terrible detective story, The Maltese Falcon does provide a fascinating glimpse into an age of films long gone—an age where films focused on plot over character and talked endlessly about what was going on.
But even if it’s been dated by the years, The Maltese Falcon is still an essential part of film history.
There’s a clear line of evolution from the cool-headed, fast-talking Sam Spade to the fearless, quippy action heroes featured in films today (Tom Cruise, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, etc).
Maybe those films will also age poorly, like The Maltese Falcon, but that’s film for you.
They’re time capsules of the past, preserved forever for our enjoyment, flaws included, but will always be “the stuff that dreams are made of.”
I’m sorry that you are so young that you have no concept of the transitional period from radio to film. Stories told on radio needed to be very wordy to paint a picture. This is how the stories were told. So in that regard the film is dated. The second thing you should account for is, it was shot during world War 2. Motion pictures studio’s were short staffed, pressed for time, and over all making an hour and 30 minutes of escape for the average person. Yes dated but not because of the actors, premise, or the book from which it is adapted from. It is the same transistion from slient to talkies. A piece of our past.
A well paced film noir with defined characters that build suspense. Bogart’s style was unique and strong.
Interested in what your critique of “Double Indemnity” might be
thank you