The Maltese Falcon *****

 

by Allan Fish

as a precursor to the imminent 1940s poll – during the course of which I will be doing a reverse countdown of my top 25 films of that decade (this time not announcing them beforehand) – one of those that missed the cut, but which remains still imperishable.

(USA 1941 100m) DVD1/2

The stuff that dreams are made of

p  Henry Blanke  d/w  John Huston  novel  Dashiell Hammett  ph  Arthur Edeson  ed  Thomas Richards  m  Adolph Deutsch  art  Robert Haas  cos  Orry-Kelly

Humphrey Bogart (Sam Spade), Mary Astor (Ruth Wonderly/Brigid O’Shaughnessy), Gladys George (Iva Archer), Peter Lorre (Joel Cairo), Sydney Greenstreet (Kaspar Gutman), Barton McLane (Det.Lt.Lundy), Elisha Cook Jnr (Wilmer Cook), Ward Bond (Det.Tom Polhaus), Lee Patrick (Effie Perine), Jerome Cowan (Miles Archer), James Burke (Luke), Murray Alper (Frank Richman), Walter Huston (Capt.Jacoby),

In his Film Guide Leslie Halliwell describes John Huston’s film as showing the difference between excellence and brilliance.  Huston’s debut was indeed brilliant, but his statement was referring rather to his review of the excellent 1931 original version of Hammett’s tale which, if truth be told, is actually closer to the spirit of Hammett’s original.  But if Halliwell was right, what is true of films is also true of their directors, and Roy Del Ruth, who directed the said original, was an excellent journeyman who made fast paced, entertaining early talkies and whose credits include such fun pre-code stuff as Blessed Event, Lady Killer and Blonde Crazy.  Huston, meanwhile, was made of worthier stuff, and though not perhaps one of the all-time greats, is guaranteed a place in cinema’s hall of fame for directing The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen and The Dead.  However his debut film remains his best and the likes of David Thomson have been quick to knock him, so do I also have doubts?

            The fact is that Huston never really fulfilled his promise.  The aforementioned films are memorable, but perhaps more memorable than they are truly great and much of his later years was spent as an actor for hire (brilliant in The Cardinal and Chinatown, for example).  The Maltese Falcon was tossed to him because no-one else would touch it, in much the same way as it was tossed to Bogart because George Raft didn’t want it.  The original, with Ricardo Cortez, was well regarded, and certainly had a Brigid in Bebe Daniels who reeked of sex and Dwight Frye, fresh from his horrific immortality at Universal, was a memorable Wilmer.  Yet swiftness and sexiness aside, it lacked a touch of inspiration and that is what Huston gave it as both writer and director.  The Maltese Falcon is a film buff’s dream, a film of unbridled, relishable joy, full of diverse characters, homophobic subtexts that are barely contained beneath the surface and a very real inherent sadism.  It is also filled with one of the great ghouls galleries in Hollywood history; Peter Lorre’s effeminate Joel Cairo, the overnight star Sydney Greenstreet as the literally larger than life Gutman, Cook as the slimy Wilmer and Astor, radiating more mystery than sex as Brigid, a woman so duplicitous as to even deceive herself.  They throw themselves into proceedings with relish and the script Huston gives them if anything improves on Hammett’s original.  The Production Code may have necessitated the sexual edge being removed, but he filled the hole with something equally intoxicating, that indefinable something that equates to greatness.  Very much what Spade referred to the Black Bird as, “the stuff that dreams are made of.”

            It is true that Huston’s film is rather stagy at times, and certainly not as visually memorable as the later noirs that immortalised the style, through no fault of Arthur Edeson.  Occasionally the direction does falter, but his delight with his new directorial toys more than makes up for it and, if like Orson Welles at RKO he owed his dual role to the success of first time writer-director Preston Sturges’ The Great McGinty the previous year, it still comes up smelling as sweet as Cairo’s stationery.  In addition to the rogues gallery, Ward Bond and Lee Patrick are perfect and Bogart is simply magnificent as Spade.  He’s not the womaniser of Cortez’s original who would screw anything with a pulse, but he’s the real McCoy.  By the end, his and the film’s immortality are assured so that, when he lets the cops take away his beloved Brigid in the elevator, you applaud him.  Altogether now, “that’s right, Angel, I’m going to send you over!“