Not a bad way to start. The Maltese Falcon, one of the most highly acclaimed films ever made, was John Huston’s directorial debut. He also wrote the screenplay, adapting Dashiell Hammett’s hard-boiled thriller into a lean piece of cinema that stands the test of time. In the 21st century if you want to watch something that’s a piece of surefire entertainment from front to back, The Maltese Falcon will not let you down.
It’s a simple story, not really a story at all, more a contrivance just sturdy enough to hold together a series of interactions between people, about three desperados all in search of a fabulously ornate bejewelled bird – the so-called Maltese Falcon – that’s been missing since the time of the Knights Templar and has now, maybe, turned up in San Francisco.
While inveterate liar Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), verbose schemer Kasper Gutman aka “the Fat Man” (Sydney Greenstreet) and exotic and effete Egyptian Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) fight among themselves over who’s going to get the bird, also on the case – unwittingly at first – is Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), a laconic detective with a highly developed sense of justice.
The film had been made once before, only ten years previously, when Ricardo Cortez had played Spade. This was a terrible piece of casting. Cortez was a bargain-bucket Rudolf Valentino and his lolling, leering version of Spade as a Latin lover was absolutely not what Hammett’s material required. Cortez apart, the 1931 version is a pretty good film. Bogart, by comparison, plays Spade as Hammett intended, as the private detective who excels at everything. No matter what is required, Spade delivers it – by turns he’s tough, tender, funny, dumb, the lover, the fighter, the hot head, the cool dude. Spade slips on the mask and plays the part.
This is a wordy film, with many scenes set in rooms where people just trade lines. To keep himself out of the quicksand, Huston directs with real economy, driving everything forwards and not getting bogged down in tricks, stylistic flourishes, fancy crane shots or anything of that sort. There is the odd cute angle, for sure, just to remind us that crooked is as crooked looks, but that’s it.
Of the three weirdos after the Falcon, Mary Astor’s O’Shaughnessy comes off least well. She’s simply less peculiar than either the sweating, grinning Gutman or the sibilant, shrinking Cairo. This was Greenstreet’s film debut and he looks as happy as a hippo in a mud bath, laying on his performance with a trowel. For Lorre, this was yet another variation on his child-murdering character from Fritz Lang’s M, but any resentment at type-casting is kept well hidden and he also bangs out his lines with relish. “This is the second time you have laid hands on me,” Cairo hisses at Spade after he’s been given another taste of Spade’s fist. “When you’re slapped you’ll take it and like it,” Spade replies, putting Cairo firmly in his place, as he does everybody in this film at one point or another.
“The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter,” Spade remarks to Guman’s wired henchman, Wilmer Cook (Elisha Cook Jr, more great casting), at one point. But The Maltese Falcon is prime Hammett not just in terms of dialogue but also in terms of its plotting. For all the mystery about the actual location of the Falcon, the real mystery at the centre of the story is the true nature of Spade. Hammett sets this idea running in the film’s opening scenes, when Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, is murderered, and only comes to a definitive conclusion in the film’s closing moments, with an elegance that is pitilessly brilliant.
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© Steve Morrissey 2023
