The Maltese Falcon

Is it wrong to say that I didn't love The Maltese Falcon? I mean, don't get me wrong, it's still a good movie. I enjoyed it. But isn't it supposed to be, like, the big daddy of all film noir? I was surprised at myself.

The Maltese Falcon, directed by John Huston, stars Humphrey Bogart as hardboiled detective Sam Spade. He and his partner, Archer, is hired by a "dame", or, in our modern parlance, a "woman", to follow a guy. When Archer and the guy both wind up dead, Spade becomes embroiled in a deadly standoff over a solid gold falcon statue from Malta.

Bogart is pure Bogart as Sam Spade. I've only ever seen him in Casablanca, but that's pretty much what he does. I like him alright, I guess, but he's not my favorite star from that period. He delivers a lot of his dialogue extremely deadpan, almost emotionless. I suppose that's how we know he's tough. My favorite moments with him, though, are the ones where he changes up his normal delivery and shows a little more humanity. As Sam Spade, he plays all sides of the case, making everyone believe he's working for them. When he's with criminals, he makes himself seem corrupt. When he's with the cops, he cooperates with them. Things can get pretty hairy when cops and criminals are in the room together, and that's part of the fun of watching him work, figuring out exactly where his loyalties lie.

My favorite character in the movie was Joel Cairo, the sniveling henchman played snivelingly by Peter Lorre, master of sniveling characters. I always like Peter Lorre in things. He was an interesting actor, and always brought a quality to his roles that only he could bring.

My real problem with The Maltese Falcon, and what really kept me from loving it, was just the sheer volume of telling when compared to the lack of showing. I know it's from a different period, budgets were lower, cinema was a lot different back then. But so much of the movie is people standing in a room, telling Spade exactly what they did, in as much detail as possible, and then Spade telling them what he did too, or what he's going to do next. Very rarely do we actually see things being done. Maybe I'm a little impatient, or maybe I've been spoiled by all these new-fangled movies where things happen.

The Maltese Falcon was made in the early 40's, which was really the onset of the film-noir genre. I'm not even sure if Citizen Kane had come out yet and revolutionized the language of film. They weren't really playing with lighting and angles as much as they could have been at that point, which is when film-noir got really fun. Still, it was an important movie for the genre, and I'm happy to have finally seen it.