The Maltese Falcon is what movies are made of: it is simply beyond all criticism. One might as well try to criticize Michelangelo's Pieta or Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. I can only try to characterize, in my own poor words, what makes Huston's first film such a masterpiece.
The screenplay, in one way, is reminiscent of Kenneth Branagh's for Hamlet, meaning that it is faithful to the original almost to a fault. Director and screenwriter John Huston closely adapted Dashiell Hammett's original pulp novel, realizing that it practically adapted itself, no additions needed. Out of necessity, there were a few changes in order to comply with the censors: the language was toned down, as well as the sexual content, particularly the leering admissions in the novel about Joel Cairo's homosexuality. But the plot and much of the dialogue seem to have bee lifted directly out of Hammett: a good thing, as Hammett was the master of hard-boiled detective-speak.
Supposedly, Huston was surprised to be given the assignment of directing The Maltese Falcon. If he had been only a writer (not to disparage the great writing profession), perhaps the movie would have been considerably less impact. As it is, however, Huston gives us the shadowy, slightly shabby rooms that make up Sam Spade's home and office, the splendidly realized Joel Cairo (made as effeminate as permissible by the Hays office), and best of all, the camera-filling girth of Casper Gutman, the "fat man." All these film elements have been elevated over time to the status of motion-picture icons. In his later years, such films as Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen, The Dead, and especially The Man Who Would Be King, Huston provided ample justification for himself as a film director, not that he needed it anymore. I feel certain that even if he had died immediately after filming The Maltese Falcon rather than forty-six years later, he would still be remembered for his first indelible stroke.
Humphrey Bogart was almost an unknown before this movie, but not afterwards. One cannot imagine any English-speaking actor past or present, better suited to the role of Samuel Spade. His unlovely appearance, his gravelly voice, his animal magnetism, all combine to make an enthralling detective, an incarnation of the Hammett literary creation. It is, however, the indefinable Bogart persona which truly makes the movie immortal: the gruding acceptance of finally doing what he knows to be the right thing. It is this famous Bogart persona which makes for the blazing final dialogue between Spade and O'Shaugnessy: "I won't play the sap for you."
Mary Astor, who did not become a cultural icon, is also excellent. From the beginning, she gives the impression of being damaged in some way: certainly not a role for the 1941 vintage Ingrid Bergman. Elisha Cook Jr. is the hapless, hopeless "gunsel" Wilmer. He deserves recognition, if for nothing else, for managing to maintain his visibility despite his high-powered co-stars. Peter Lorre's turn as Joel Cairo is second only to his performance as the murderer in M in terms of being memorable: simultaneously effete and deadly, he has a daintiness that both attracts and repels. Sydney Greenstreet, in his film debut, is larger than life as Gutman (joke not intended). Gutman combines murderous pragmatism with bonhomie, an original combination, to be sure.
This is one of those movies with doezens of lines memorized by film buffs everyhwere. If you can't recite any, it is your patriotic duty to learn some. There are also the images which imprint themselves forever on the brain: Gutman chipping the paint off the black bird, O'Shaugnessy in custody descending in an elevator, Gutman with Cairo and Wilmer leaving behind the unconscious Spade.
If this film has a fault, it is perhaps the score, which sounds all-too-conventional for the 30's and 40's. Imagine the harrowing music a Bernard Herrman or a Jerry Goldsmith might compose for this. But such complaints are akin to carping about individual brush strokes in the Sistine Chapel ceiling. So much is right with it that it is downright silly to complain about what is wrong.
Four stars
Copyright 1997 by Dale G. Abersold
