I decided to venture into a movie genre I'm not terribly familiar with, the film noir genre.
I haven't seen very many film noir, so as I tend to do, I consulted a couple of top list. However I found myself a bit annoyed by them and quickly realized that I subconsciously wanted the list to place The Maltese Falcon at the top. So I ditched the lists and just sat down to enjoy this classic.
The Maltese Falcon (1941) is not the first film version of the novel by Dashiell Hammet, but it is the best known. It was the directorial debut by the now legendary John Huston and stars Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and others.
The first five minutes were a bit of a shock to me. I genuinely wondered what I was getting myself into, but this lasted only until my brain adjusted. The Maltese Falcon is not the oldest movie I have seen, I believe Nosferatu (1922) holds that distinction, but the way films were made back in the 40's is rather different that how they were made later on. Everything is a stage, there are no natural scenes, and it shows. It feels more stiff and formal, more like a play than a movie, but once I acclimatized to it I started to enjoy myself.
The Maltese Falcon is in pretty much every way the archetype of the noir genre. The private detective (Bogart), the damsel in distress with skeletons in her closet (Astor), the shady dealer (Lorre), the tough cops, desperate gunman etc, it is all here, and it is done well.
It is hard to know when a movie is too old to spoil. At what point are you released from the responsibility to keep silent? I don't know, but I'm not going to spoil the plot, I'll only say that there is an incredibly valuable statue, the falcon, and that everyone wants it. Trouble and tribulations follow. This is very much a case of the journey being more important than the destination, not that the destination isn't important. The acting is superb once you get a hang of the style. Like on a stage, there is a tendency towards over acting, but it's just the style of the time. The movie does a lot of close-ups on the faces which places a demand on the actors to perform with expressions and they deliver, but the real gold comes from the cinematography.
The camera work is truly excellent. Huston created an incredible tension is scene after scene with very little to work with. Between the acting and Huston's technique, you get some truly suspenseful scenes, that any modern movie would be hard pressed to equal let alone surpass.
The dialogue is amazing. Rapid fire wit in scene after scene that puts many comedies to shame and this is far from a comedy to begin with.
Praise aside, The Falcon has some problems. All I could find in the way of continuity is a continuity clerk, not a whole department to keep track of things. Example: when Bogart punches out Lorre, Lorre's tie changes between from when the punch starts and he passes out. Small things like that are littered around. What really stood out to me was the opening scrawl. It explains that "In 1539, the Knight Templars of Malta, paid tribute to Charles V of Spain, by sending him a Golden Falcon..." The leaders of the Knights Templar were arrested in 1307 and the order was disbanded in 1312... It is possible they were thinking of another order of knights or that they simply didn't give a damn. Either way, it is pretty silly.
So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, absolutely. Unless you are allergic to old black and white movies, you really should watch The Maltese Falcon if you haven't done so already. I had blast and I'm looking forward to getting to know the film noir genre better.
That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great and safe week!
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