The Enduring Influence of the Maltese Falcon
The four main actors on the scene of 1941’s The Maltese Falcon: Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet. Credit: Dashiell Hammett, Gettyimages
It was the third attempt at adapting Dashiell Hammett’s 1930 novel for the screen, a feat thought to be impossible in the era of the Hays Code; a strict censorship code that reigned over the American film industry from the 30s to the 60s. The first adaptation, made a few years before the code’s enforcement, was hidden away in the Hollywood vault for its not so subtle, and loyal to the book, references to sex and gay relationships. The second attempt, and first during the Hays era, bombed hard and was dismissed by its own cast as “junk”. So when screenwriter John Huston announced that his first foray into directing would be a new adaptation of The Maltese Falcon, Warner Bros was, to say the least, hesitant about the project.
Released eighty years ago in 1941, The Maltese Falcon was, to the surprise of almost everyone in show business, a huge critical and financial success, since withstanding the test of time, outlasting many of its contemporaries as a highlight of cinematic history that has left its fingerprints on the films that have come after it.
The story takes place in San Francisco. The viewer is introduced to a pair of private detectives who run an agency together: the ever cynical Sam Spade and his somewhat more idealistic colleague Miles Archer. A prospective client calling herself Ruth Wonderly hires the pair to find her sister, who disappeared with a man named Floyd Thursby. She explains that Thursby has agreed to meet her that evening, so Archer offers to follow Miss Wonderly to help get her sister back. The next morning, Sam Spade is awoken by the police, who inform him that Archer and Thursby have both been murdered, and that he is a suspect. As he sets about finding the culprit, trying to discern fact from fiction as he crosses paths with a range of characters with their own motives and secrets, Spade finds himself embroiled in the convoluted search for a long-lost bejewelled falcon statuette, the Maltese Falcon.
The novel was written in 1929, when society was plunged into the Great Depression, but the setting is updated by the film to the then present day—that is, 1941. The cynicism that pervades the novel, reflecting the general mood of Depression era America, translated seamlessly to the 1940s, where that disillusionment and uncertainty returned; the war in Europe loomed at the forefront of everyone’s mind and America was at a crossroads, unsure where to get involved. Just two months after The Maltese Falcon was released, the US finally entered the war.
The Maltese Falcon sets the tone for the film noirs that would follow; the dark gloominess that lingers in the cinematography, the glaze over the characters’ eyes; the bite of the dialogue’s dry wit, a new sort of humour that would have been exciting to an audience disenchanted with the sugar-coated screwball comedies that ruled the box office in the 1930s.
The cast themselves knew they were working on something exciting; there are many stories of the pranks the cast and crew would play on any visitors who dared linger near the set. Referred to by screenwriter and film critic Paul Shrader as the first film noir, a genre and cinematic movement that became more prevalent in American theatres as the war continued—and even during the post-war period--The Maltese Falcon deserves its recognition as a landmark in film history.
With the fast, harsh delivery of the dialogue, the cinematography—the use of symmetry in the framing, of contrasting shadows and light—and the establishment of now iconic character archetypes such as the hardboiled detective and the femme fatale, The Maltese Falcon laid out the groundwork for an entire genre, establishing visual and writing techniques that would be taken to their extremes in later noir classics like Double Indemnity (1944) and The Third Man (1949).
Although the concept of the hardboiled detective, or at least an early version of it, had existed in pulp novels for a few years, Humphrey Bogart created something new for the screen with his portrayal of Sam Spade, a cynical, morally grey character who is willing to bend the law to suit his own purposes but steadfastly maintains a personal code of ethics, whatever that may be. The iterations of Spade in the earlier adaptations of the story had nothing close to the same biting intensity of Bogart’s portrayal. All the best loved, morally dubious characters that are popular today could be said to owe something to Bogart and The Maltese Falcon.
Mary Astor, one of the best actresses of her day, though often forgotten in modern discussions of iconic actresses, gives possibly the best performance of her career as a conniving adventuress who would say and do anything to get what she wants—although not as salacious as her novel counterpart, due to pressure from the Hays Code. Astor still manages to lend the character an undeniable allure that makes it clear how she’s managed to get this far.
And of the supporting cast, Peter Lorre is another highlight in his meticulous performance as the deceptively well-mannered Joel Cairo, not only in the delivery of his lines but in his physical interpretation of the role, from his manner of walking to the way he fiddles with his walking cane while he sits and talks to Spade in their first scene together.
There are a thousand and one reasons why The Maltese Falcon is a film that should be remembered, and the year of its eightieth anniversary seems a better time than any to revisit the film that is, to borrow the closing line, “the stuff that dreams are made of.”