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Welcome to Movies & Film
Movie Reviews, & Film Industry Commentary
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1941 – NR – 101 min.
Director: John Huston
Primary Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Ward Bond, Barton MacLane, Gladys George, Jerome Cowan
Stars ***** (of 5)
Popcorn **** (of 5)
Film Type(s): Film Noir, Detective Story, Treasure
Synopsis: San Fransisco Private Eye Sam Spade (Bogart) is just a guy. He does what it takes to get the job done, but still has a sense of honor about him. One day a woman (Astor) comes into the offices of Spade and Archer Detective Agency, offering a lot of money for Spade and his partner Archer (MacLane) to protect her from a Floyd Thursby. Neither of them believes her story, but takes the case anyway with Archer taking the lead. This proves to be fatal, as Archer is found shot later that night nearby Thursby. When Spade begins to investigate the girl, her case, and his partner’s death, he soon finds out that the girl lied about a lot of things, like that her name was really O’Shaughnessey, and that she is really after a jewel-encrusted artifact shaped like a falcon. Spade soon encounters soft-touch Joel Cairo (Lorre) and the chubby intellectual Kasper Gutman (Greenstreet), who are also after the bird. How far will these shady characters go to get the Maltese Falcon?
Review: Lock, stock, and barrel, the best Film Noir ever (and arguably the first true Noir made). This is the third filming of the Dashiel Hammet book of the same name, with 1931’s The Maltese Falcon (aka. Dangerous Female) and 1936’s Satan Met A Lady coming before, but this is by far the most infamous take on Sam Spade and company. Maybe it’s the casting, with Humphrey Bogart in the role of Spade (a part that he became synonymous with and launched him into super-stardom) and “major” supporting players in the forms of Lorre, Greenstreet, Astor (who won an Oscar the same year for The Great Lie), and a just-off-Gone With The Wind Ward Bond. This was also the Directorial debut of Screenwriter John Huston, and would start a distinguished career that would later include pairings with Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, and The African Queen (although Huston had co-Adapted Bogarts preceding film, 1941’s High Sierra). In true Noir fashion, the story follows the simple, but episodically charismatic story line that Sam Spade, complete with trench coat and hat on, gets hired by girl, his partner gets killed working on the girl’s case, murder mystery ensues that includes multiple plot twists, double crosses, and mystery men with their own agenda; all with flatfoot Spade on the case. Like many Noirs made after this, everyone is after something for their own reasons, and even when the object of their afflictions is unveiled to be something other than what they thought it should be, they still cannot help but have it be “the stuff that dreams are made of.”
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