The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Quick - as a young, energetic, inexperienced director you must make a final decision. As this director, one must either decide to show the audience the famed jeweled bird that has nearly taken up an hour and forty minutes of time, or transform a rather talking ending into a glorified public service announcement. The decision is a difficult one, but one must remember to reward the audience for their patience and time. Alas, that is not the case with this director in his first film "The Maltese Falcon". We are speaking of John Huston and his directorial debut with this live-action version of Dashiell Hammett's famed voice. It is a caper of sorts, a classic "who-done-it" which forces the audience to listen for clues and make their own judgment upon a vast array of cinematic icons. There is the first time introduction to the cultish detective Sam Spade, an early view of Chiklis' Vic Makey from "The Shield", in which Spade is held by no bonds and answers to nobody higher. There is the dame, Brigid O'Shaughnessy, who is the quintessential wild-card of the group, holding nothing but betting all, she sparks where there should be a flame. Peter Lorre's classic Joel Cairo leaves plenty for parody for the next several decades, while Sidney Greenstreet plays the cliché British crime lord willing to believe he is the smartest in the bunch. So we have a beginning - Huston inventing a formula that will be copies, used, abused, and overplayed throughout Hollywood for the rest of days - so ... why doesn't this original feel original?

With our players in place, Hammett's voice spoken with ease, and Huston behind the wheel - this should have felt like a country drive with tension building at the right parts, the take arriving sooner than expected, and Spade proving himself the victor unconditionally. Yet, this wasn't the track "The Maltese Falcon" took. Instead, we begin with a jumbled jigsaw puzzle of facts, relics, and the unknown that makes you feel that you have 5000 pieces and only an hour to complete. Huston begins our story with grace, giving us early indication of our characters and brute honesty that seemed unexplored for the time, but just as we believe we understand the overall plot, he throws in more, on top of more, on top of more to thicken the plot, when in fact he is fully pulling us away from the illustrious "Falcon". This movie is about a bird. It is a rare statuette that promises wealth and power to whoever holds it. It is this bird that scatters our characters all over the place, but ultimately takes them nowhere. Without giving any overbearing plot points away, Spade early on looses his partner uncaringly. Spade, a womanizer with his partner's wife, seems to care less about the death and is literally scraping his name away from the window the next day. I understood Spade to be a loner, a troubled detective whose brains foiled his heart, but this seemed a bit too cold for a character that we were to care about. Huston gives us nothing with Spade - any history that is begun is immediately dropped as a new plot devise is introduced. Bogart lisps his way through the performance, proving that he is just as cold as the criminals, but never quite connects with the audience. Huston will not give us the bird, so instead he detracts our focus away from the statue to Spade, which again, doesn't have enough to build on.

My point is that our characters give us nothing. They may be enjoyable to view on screen, but they are as bland and thin as the paper I write this on. Over the years, they have been unjustly transformed into iconic characters, but I needed to know more about Spade - what made him tick and a bit more detail on his slight idiosyncrasies. While I may have enjoyed watching Lorre's portrayal of Cairo, his usefulness became obsolete by the end. These characters were there, but why? This is a question the inexperienced Huston forgot to include, but Hammett does in detail throughout his book. This is a talking caper, one that doesn't use fancy car chases or large shoot-outs to make their connections, but instead it uses words to guide our characters from A to B. With this said, the words were in place to tell a great story - but Huston could not get his characters to give varied emotions to give us characters. Am I too needy when it comes to early films of this nature? How could "The Thin Man" successfully do this, and entertainingly make me laugh, while as the time moved I cared less and less about this falcon that was supposed to carry this film? Huston just seemed to be missing a big element that should have connected our characters to this bird - we needed something to keep our motives in motion.

Finally, without giving anything dynamic away, the ending was pitiful and unexciting. Finally, we have exactly what we need, the chess pieces are ready to be victorious, but then nothing happens. Huston builds tension, but provides no conclusion. Instead of being an "Indiana Jones" our heroines become sputterer's of life lessons. One doesn't need a lesson, we need a conclusion. The final image of the bird in the light sent shivers down my spine because of the time devoted to this slap-happy mystery. There was no mystery, only a warning about greed. Even with the non-caring Spade, this film didn't mind that it sucked the suspense dry, from both Hammett and the viewers.

Overall, I must credit this film for being an original. Sam Spade's likeness has been used in nearly every detective film both symbolically and overtly. But, just because an icon rests here - it doesn't mean that the film itself is worthy of praise. Hammett's words were not voiced properly in this film, and the dedication towards nothing was outstanding. This was a film about a statue of a bird, but instead we spend more time talking about it than actually finding the bird. Our characters are paper thin, and by the end we care nothing for whomever ends up with it - either good or bad. It was as if Huston had taken all the pieces of a puzzle, bunched them together, randomly hammered them together, and then provided us with a sloppy finished product. I wanted to like this film - it is a dark classic that is honestly overplayed - but I cared nothing for what was happening. Thirty minutes in I was bored. What would Spade think of that? "The Maltese Falcon" is worth one viewing, but any more would be disastrous. The verbose ending ruined my image of Spade - how about you?

Found in my "Cult Film" book with Martin Sheen coming out of the bog in "Apocalypse Now" - this gets a pink mark. Decent, not loved, but not to be watched again. Not a favorite - simply there to be in cinema.

Reviewed originally : July 23rd, 2008