The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of October 30, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, Humphrey Bogart, Crime / Noir / Thriller , trackback‘When a man’s partner is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you’re supposed to do something about it. And it happens we’re in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it’s…it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere.’
Sam Spade
It’s quite rare that writing, acting, editing and directing collide at the very same intersection in time and space, producing a piece of work that could be said to be perfect, but 1941’s The Maltese Falcon is such a movie.
Quite simply, it is a scintillating, head spinning, exhilarating directorial debut by screenwriter John Huston, a maverick talent who is somewhat undervalued today (but not by you, gentle reader).
One of the reasons Huston, who had long been lobbying to direct, was given the job was because Warners were anxious to grab some of the limelight away from RKO and their wunderkind, a certain Mr Welles - ‘See? We got one here too!’
That they did, earning the plaudits of critics and setting the cash registers ringing, a combination that warmed the coal black heart of Jack Warner. But in making a commercial and critical success, Huston and his team also set the trend for a whole new genre. The influence of German expressionist cinema gave the film a look that no other detective movie had hitherto enjoyed; cinematographer Arthur Edeson had a whale of a time playing with unusual camera angles and a brilliantly imaginative use of light and shadow that would become a staple of what became known as Film Noir.
While Warners wanted a Welles spin for the film, they hedged their bets by giving their own ‘boy wonder’ a tight shooting schedule and a miniscule budget, (Jack being the big spending studio head everyone wanted to work for…) the kind of artistic straitjacket that bounding free from sometimes stimulates, as in this case (and in the case of Halloween, to make a topical reference), a film crew to give of their finest work.
Huston also faced the problem of ‘The Code’. The Hays Office had no such hold over the 1931 version, but even so, for all that film’s shots of disheveled couches and rolls of bills tucked down stockinged legs, it hasn’t half the electricity of this film made a decade later. There’s no ambiguity, Code or not, about the sexuality of ‘Cairo’, ‘Gutman’ or ‘Wilmer’, no coyness over the lusty affair of ‘Sam’ (the first really great anti-hero, others vying for the crown being on the side of ‘bad’ rather than ‘good’) and ‘Brigid’, or even over Sam and ‘Miles’s’ bed-hopping activities.
Warners, watching every last cent, gave Huston a cast on the cheap; Bogart, a contract player, had spent years being the villainous fall guy for a role call of the studio’s stars. After finally impressing as a lead in High Sierra, Bogie would at last make it into the big time as ‘Sam Spade’. Mary Astor’s career was on the slide after revelations about her private life, but those same lurid stories would prove the spur for a lifetime best performance as her screen alter ego ‘Brigid O’Shaughnessy’. A 61-year-old man of Kent and the theatre, who had never before acted on screen, Sydney Greenstreet would make as stunning a debut as his young director - by God, sir, he would - and the marvellous Peter Lorre would complete a quartet who would go down in cinema history.
When Warners told Huston to crack the whip and quicken the pace, or face overshooting his schedule, the young debutant, whose mentor was Howard Hawks, reacted by urging his actors to deliver their lines in quickfire ‘Hawksian’ manner. From the opening scene to the closing credits, The Maltese Falcon never lets up. There’s not a spare moment, not an ounce of padding. Huston even manages to cram more of Dashiell Hamett’s novel into the action by a simple narrative trick; the telephone call. There are a number throughout the film, no need to cut to another set, no useless exposition between characters to deaden the pace. Beautifully done. What might be otherwise considered ‘talkie’ is riveting, the dialogue zinging about the screen like hand grenades tossed between opposing trenches.
Hammett, a former Pinkerton detective, wrote about what he knew, the underbelly of San Francisco, the knife in the back alley, the blurring of the lines of good guys and bad. His ‘Sam Spade’ is almost an emotional vacuum, but it was the young director and Bogart who, together, really breathed life into him. Huston brought these real people to the screen, and we can believe in each and every one of them, from the moral ambiguity of Spade (’Here’s to crime…’), who ends the film having had, as another Bogart character famously would, his insides kicked out, to the prissy, orally fixated ’Joel Cairo’ (’Gardenias? Shoo him in Effie darling…’), the driven fat man ’Kasper Gutman’ (’I'll tell you right out, I’m a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk…’) and even Elisha Cook Jr.’s beautifully sketched ‘Wilmer’, tears welling in his puppy dog eyes as Spade goads the inept gunsel into one last rash act.
Bogart himself is at last given a role to stretch his acting chops; his Spade couldn’t give a damn when Miles (Jerome Cowan) is found dead, after all, he’s been cuckolding him for a while now. But whatever else happens, whoever else gets in the way, he has to bring his killer to justice. He’s as cold as a cadaver with ‘Iva’ (Gladys George), at first amused then aroused by Brigid, he impresses Gutman (Greenstreet) with his sharp wit and resourcefulness, and the look of pure evil - genuine relish - on his face when he first disarms then cracks Cairo (Lorre) on the chin is worth the price of the film alone (well, either that or Brigid booting poor Joel with a stinging right stiletto…)
But the more I watch The Maltese Falcon, the more impressed I am with Mary Astor’s performance as the deadly Brigid. She has to match Bogie scene for scene, but at the same time, like Ginger Rogers, who famously had to do everything Fred did but in high heels and backwards, she is playing the role of a woman who is playing many roles. Ms O’Shaughnessy is an accomplished liar and sexual predator who ensnares men then disposes of them like last night’s pizza. Or like a goldfish down the toilet. She’s the quintessential femme fatale, which for Sam, is half the attraction. ‘Now you are dangerous…’ laughs Spade, licking his lips in anticipation.
There’s a tangible electricity between Astor and Bogart that gives their screen relationship a verité that makes the denouement all the more tragic. This isn’t just Bogie’s film, as much as it wouldn’t be the absolute classic it is without him, it’s very much an ensemble piece, a piece about greed, acquisitiveness and the dangers of getting what you wish for.
And having said that the ‘Falcon’ represents movie nirvana, from the whole of the cast to Adolph Deutsch’s magnificent score, Robert Haas’s sets and Perc Westmore’s makeup, there is one thing I’m curious about. There’s an obvious edit when Iva Archer visits Sam at his office (and I think I’m right in saying another right at the end, with maybe a line or two snipped); they clinch, Sam attempts to calm Iva down, then - cut, and she’s out the door. I’d love to see the footage that originally existed there and know why it was cut, if indeed it was; I haven’t listened yet to the DVD commentary, maybe the answer is there.
Warners R1 Special Edition DVD is (pack issues aside, see my previous post) almost as perfect as the film itself. The latest transfer is quite beautiful; my old R2 was excellent, but there was evidence of some marks and a couple of dupey sections, wrongs which have now been righted. The extras are pretty good, though the ‘talking heads’ documentary is a little superfluous I expect it might be useful for those who are unfamiliar with the film or its stars.
Watching the 1931 version only served to show just how far the art form of film had come since the introduction of sound just over a decade earlier, just what an enormous talent John Huston was, and an early chance to explore the difference between a film that is ’explicit’ and one that is ’grown-up’. I’m filled with trepidation over the second version of the film in this set, Dieterle’s Satan Met a Lady, which looks dreadful.
Of Huston’s early work, I’m pushed to decide which is better; The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the The Sierra Madre or The Asphalt Jungle. The cowards way out is to go for the draw, so that’s what I’ll do.
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