Short Take: The Maltese Falcon

The 1941 film version of The Maltese Falcon was Hollywood's third try at adapting Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel. It was by far the best effort, and it has become the archetype of the private-detective thriller. It is still one of the most entertaining films from pre-World War II Hollywood. Humphrey Bogart plays Sam Spade, a San Francisco private detective who finds himself in the middle of the intrigues of a group of rival artifact smugglers. John Huston, who wrote the script and directed, was quite faithful to the book. It's not one a filmmaker would need to rework. Hammett's style is quite literal: straightforward action and dialogue, and nothing more. Huston brought what was needed, namely a lack of squeamishness about the rather misanthropic tone, and the recognition that a no-frills, fast-paced presentation--the cinematic equivalent of Hammett's prose--served the material best. The staging, camerawork, and editing are handled with remarkable precision. They serve the story so well that it almost seems to tell itself. The Spade character isn't softened. He's a smug, mercenary bully, and the mix of alertness, cynicism, and drive that Bogart gives him is just about perfect. The performance doesn't have the resonance of Bogart's best work elsewhere--there are no notes of melancholy--but he has never been more exciting to watch. Huston plays the supporting cast off him terrifically well. The characters all have their defining qualities--the pity-me duplicitousness of Mary Astor's femme fatale, the effeteness of Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo, Sydney Greenstreet's unctuous expansiveness as Casper Gutman--but the actors underplay, and it creates a striking and at times droll counterpoint with Spade's aggressiveness. The other players include Elisha Cook, Jr., Lee Patrick, and Gladys George. The cinematography is by Arthur Edeson. Adolph Deutsch provided the over-emphatic score.