Noir November: The Maltese Falcon
Written by Cameron Geiser
Every day for the month of November, Cameron Geiser is reviewing a noir film (classic or neo) for Noir November. Today covers the 1941 classic by John Huston, The Maltese Falcon.
Welcome to the first day of Noir November! For the remainder of this month I'll be covering a Noir film each day, mostly in chronological order. The essentials will be covered, I can assure you that much. However, I'll be showcasing some lesser known films within the genre in the hope that I can introduce some readers to a few films that they may not have come across otherwise. As we progress throughout the decades I do hope to prove that Noir isn't just a thing of the past, and that it still informs many staples of modern cinema to this day.
The first film we will be discussing is a staple of the genre, and the film that many point to as the inaugural Noir film, The Maltese Falcon. John Huston's directorial debut was also the film that cemented the atmosphere that had been so perfected in those hard-boiled detective paperback novels that sold like flapjacks for the previous ten to twenty years. Rainy nights, paranoia and suspicion around every corner, dangerous dames in the form of the femme fatale, and cold-hearted truth seekers like Private Detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart). Spade and his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) are met one day by Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor), a woman searching for her missing sister- known to have skipped town with a man called Thursby. Archer takes on the case and is immediately murdered later that night! When Spade calls on Ms. Wonderly for details, he finds that she's checked out of her hotel, and before you know it the Police are at Spade's door. They inform him that Thursby was also found dead, which leads to suspicions of Spade's own potential involvement in the crimes. Thus the mystery is afoot!
Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.
Spade quickly tracks down Ms. Wonderly, who gives up her real name, Brigid O'Shaughnessy- and reveals that Thursby was actually her partner. She suspects that Thursby killed Archer, but doesn't know who killed Thursby. She convinces Spade to investigate the murders further, but when he returns to his office he's met by Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), one of the underlings of the "Fat Man", Kasper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet). Ole Sam Spade lets the threads of mystery unfold as he casually pursues the truth, often manipulating others through flourishes of fabricated rage and threatening gestures. Which is charmingly juxtaposed to his demeanor when alone, jauntily whistling, often smirking at his own theatrics. Once at the Fat Man's suite, Gutman details the known history of the black bird Cairo had hired Spade to track down, the titular Maltese Falcon. Gutman recounts that the jeweled stone bird was once offered in tribute by the Knights Templar in the 16th century to the King of Spain. During the journey the ship carrying the Falcon was beset by pirates, and lost to history.
This film, the quintessential Noir, is soaked in cynicism with a moral code leaning closer to that of a Sam Peckinpah Western than the blinding optimism approaching in the next decade of media, is one that implies an unsure future devolved from a once rich past. The Maltese Falcon's fable- of a treasure delivered by Knights, to a King, only to be lost to Pirates- gives the sensation that we're all just living in the relics of an ancient world, riddled with the riches of the past, and left to sift through our ancestors' collective trauma. The Maltese Falcon wasn't just a damn fine film, it was a firm confirmation that this John Huston guy might just have what it takes to make it in Hollywood.
Cameron Geiser is an avid consumer of films and books about filmmakers. He'll watch any film at least once, and can usually be spotted at the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Northern Michigan. He also writes about film over at www.spacecortezwrites.com.