The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Director: John Huston
Had I seen this before: Yes
Welcome to Noirvember, where we are kicking things off with one of the true classics of the genre, John Huston's directorial debut The Maltese Falcon. Now, John Huston is one of my personal most-watched directors (is a phrase that I could leave alone if I wanted you to infer that I have spent a great deal of time considering celebrated and influential films such as Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, or The Night of the Iguana when in fact it is) because I have seen his 1982 Albert Finney-starring adaptation of Annie approaching somewhere around 2,000 times in my life. So it's of course exciting for me to discover what he can do outside of the musical theater realm.
Picture it: Malta, 1539. Thus beseeches our opening crawl, an exciting tale of ancient Knights Templar and a lost, unimaginably valuable treasure in the form of a bird statue. I would estimate that 95% of the times I have referenced this film in my life have been in order to provide an example of a MacGuffin--it's possibly the most important unimportant item in 20th century film. A real slippery fellow, that falcon. Nearly as slippery is the beautiful Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), who slides into the San Francisco office of detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) with a fake name, a suspicious story about a missing sister, and an even more suspicious amount of money to throw at the problem. The cigarette smoke is drifting, the blinds are slanted, the characters are clever but wary--we're really noiring it up, right out of the gate. Spade's partner Archer goes to stake out the situation and is shot dead in the process, at which point we are made aware of several things at once--Spade does not seem especially alarmed at the news, indicating that he did not like his partner all that much and is not easily excitable in the face of danger, oh and also by the way he was having an affair with Archer's wife. I appreciated the efficiency of establishing this character, who could perhaps have been mistaken for more of a straight-ahead good guy in the opening scene with Brigid, as the anti-hero that he is. No soft-boiled guy, this. When they boiled Sam Spade they boiled him hard.
He also talks to his loyal secretary Effie as though she is a golden retriever--"good girl, angel, darling, sweetheart, precious," etc.--and when he reports the news of Archer's death, he sternly admonishes her "now, don't get excited." To be clear, Effie rules in this movie--she's one of those pleasantly competent side characters who enhances every scene she's in. She manages to put up with a man who is perhaps a good detective but is, I'm sorry, a very bad boss, and never breaks a sweat. More than once my notes for this movie indicate that whatever Sam is paying Effie is certainly not enough. Now, to be fair, calling his 40-year-old employee "precious" is actually one of the less condescending tones he takes with other characters. He is amusingly dismissive, for example, of the cops, who again to be fair, are sort of whinily asking him for help most of the time.
Obviously the situation with Brigid and the dead partner and the unsubtle guy tailing Spade spins out of control, as these things are wont to do. The movie doesn't really start cooking until my two MVPs show up--Peter Lorre, my favorite bug-eyed Hungarian as Joel Cairo, a character we are meant to understand is a homosexual because this is the 1940s and his business cards smell like gardenias; and stage actor Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut, the inspiration for the "It's too hot today" Simpsons meme and (truly, I say this with nothing but respect and awe) an absolute unit of a man. I genuinely appreciate the way his physical presence is used here--the other character refer to him as the Fat Man, but he never seems like the butt of a joke. It adds to his gravitas as an unpredictable villain. His character is wonderful to watch, lightly amused by even the most threatening of Spade's jabs, dangerous but charismatic, focused and not at all easily deterred.
If I'm being completely honest, I don't love Bogart as Sam Spade--I know that's probably approaching blasphemy for the TCM set, but to my eye his energy never quite settles into the character in a satisfying manner. The way he grins like he's an animal barring its teeth makes him a little too unsettling and distant, not nearly as magnetic as the strange and compelling Lorre or Greenstreet. I think he's better suited to something like Casablanca, where he is just as world-weary but less sharp, or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, where is allowed to go Full Dirtbag. And I never really buy the chemistry between him and Mary Astor, which is unfortunately a pretty crucial element of the story. I never feel any heat there at all, just strangled breathiness and coldly arched eyebrows.
That's not to say that this movie isn't well worth your time, of course--the dialogue is snappy and the air is smoky and the villain is oddly enchanting. Everyone is wearing hats. When the cops want to haul a bunch of people down to the station they bark "Get your hats!" Wonderful stuff. The violence is realistically random and almost comical--a wild kick, a punch in a mouth. The lit up San Francisco skyline behind Spade's office is intoxicating. The moment when Effie the competent secretary arrives with a priceless treasure bundled in newspaper and calmly hands it off to a room full of people who are all half-insane with greed and paranoia as though she's fulfilling a grocery order is deeply satisfying. The fact that they keep referring to a gunman who is clearly nearing 40 as "boy" and "kid" is charmingly inexplicable. And that maddening bird--the stuff that dreams are made of--is always in the wind.
Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Our private conversations have been not been such that I am anxious to continue them."
Is it under two hours: Yes
How fatale is la femme: Mary Astor's take on the duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessy is more on the flustered, breathy, buttoned-up side than anything approaching a smoky siren. This is, of course, part of her character's act, but I never feel like she makes a turn into convincingly calculating trickster--she's all hats and stoles and ruffles for days and "ah, oh no, ah, oh my"s. Such long skirts that we never even see the gams. 4/10
Garlic Butter Pork Chops from The Forked Spoon
Food tie-ins are going to require a little more stretching this month, as the only substances consumed in most noirs are cigarettes, whiskey, and black coffee. In this case, as in The Haunting, I had to reach for the source novel, wherein we find Sam Spade dining on "chops, baked potatoes, and sliced tomatoes." I did not include any greenery on the plate, not even a sprig of parsley, because Sam Spade is too hard-boiled for that sort of nonsense.
Up next: Time to closely examine the terms of that life insurance policy
