A dark, steely performance from Humphrey Bogart is at the cynical heart of John Huston’s adaptation of the classic detective novel
John Huston’s adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel, as well as having the greatest MacGuffin of all time, is a ringing disproof of Raymond Chandler’s belief that detective stories depend on men coming through doors with guns. People arrive with guns a good deal in The Maltese Falcon, but mostly without them; Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade makes a point of telling us he prefers to be unarmed, and he has a very cool line in disarming other people. And what a superb performance from Bogart: darker, steelier and more ambiguous than his Rick in Casablanca, with all the world-weary cynicism, but none of the romantic sacrifice – just a strangely opaque manipulative streak, a need to use the
Women that cross his path. It’s a tough wised-up routine, involving pantomime displays of furious anger to intimidate people, which shifts to jaunty, unconcerned whistling when he is alone, and finally flowers into anguish and defiance.
He plays San Francisco private detective Spade, who in time-honoured style is approached by a shady lady in his office: this is the highly-strung Brigid O’Shaughnessy, played by Mary Astor. She spins Spade a line about needing him to tail someone in the city. Spade isn’t buying it but allows his excitable partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) to take the
Job, and Spade remains sociopathically unmoved at the news that Miles has been shot dead. By who? It just so happens that Sam has been carrying on an affair with Miles’s wife Iva (Gladys George) and this tough, cool customer is soon kissing Miss O’Shaughnessy full on the lips. From a shoal of red herrings emerges a slippery fellow called Joel Cairo, played by Peter Lorre, and heavy-set businessman Kasper Gutman, played by
Sydney Greenstreet. They are all after the same thing: a staggeringly valuable jewelled ornament, the “Maltese Falcon”, once offered in tribute by the Knights Templar in the 16th century to the King of
Spain.