The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy The Maltese Falcon on DVD.

John Huston had a pretty good year in 1941. He wrote the screenplays for Raoul Walsh's High Sierra and Howard Hawks' Sergeant York (for which he was nominated for an Oscar), and directed his first film, which has become known as one of the greatest debuts in movie history, and he did it the same year Orson Welles made his first film, Citizen Kane.

The Maltese Falcon is a dark and brave film, and gets away with a great many things; Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) having Archer's name removed from the door, badgering the unstable Wilmer (Elisha Cook Jr.) and psychologically torturing Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), who gives as good as she gets. Huston also did a great job of adapting Dashiell Hammett's wonderful hard-boiled dialogue, and the movie does stand up to repeated viewings because of it.

However, for all its good points, I don't think The Maltese Falcon holds up as a great film. Huston's direction, which shows good instinct, was still a little green. The movie is stagy (the story takes place in San Francisco, but there is nary an exterior shot to show it). The actors mostly move around sets, saying the great dialogue. To Huston's credit, though, he is a great stage director. The characters are placed in the scene for maximum effect. There are also one or two nice cinematic touches, such as the last shot in which Mary Astor goes down in the elevator, with the bars slamming in front of her face, and Humphrey Bogart responds by going down a staircase (presumably to hell) for selling her out.

Mary Astor is another of the film's great problems. Although she may have been a fine actress, she and Huston clearly didn't click. She is stiff and annoying. It's hard to believe a man like Bogart could fall in love with such a twit. Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, however are among the best of their generation, and the screen is electrified when they are together. (All three went on to appear in Casablanca the following year.)

To further illustrate my point, one could view The Maltese Falcon back-to-back with Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep, a very similar movie in tone and theme. Hawks' movie is alive and pulses and moves along with great conviction. Or perhaps High Sierra, which isn't as dark, but Raoul Walsh's direction of the action and suspense sequences make Huston's look primitive.

The Maltese Falcon is still worth watching for the great stuff that is there. It's close enough to a perfect film, but it is not one.

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, Elisha Cook Jr.
Written by: John Huston, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett
Directed by: John Huston
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 101 minutes
Date: November 18, 1997